‘Force.com Platform’ Category

Does that mean you can create a profitable cloud business by building your product on Force.com? The answer is–not necessarily.

In reality, most companies struggle to see the return on investment after all their development effort. Here’s why: In a perfect world, seat sales through the AppExchange would happen at the same rate that consumers download music on iTunes. Business buyers, however, are harder to reach and take forever to convince. Both traditional ISVs and startups usually discover they have been overly optimistic not only about how fast they can sell but also about what price targets they can achieve. To make things worse, ISVs find the product development, maintenance, and delivery costs to be much more expensive than anticipated.

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.

I just read the announcement from Wipro and Oracle about their Cloud platform for software companies in this article, Wipro Offers Cloud Computing Service, from Mary Hayes Weier of InformationWeek.  According to the announcement, Wipro and Oracle are providing a service which will let software companies offer their existing applications as SaaS in a multitenant model. They claim they can move your apps into the Cloud at 50% of the cost.

Wipro is, undoubtedly, a very smart company. So is Oracle. And it definitely makes sense for two smart companies to generate some headlines. However, that’s all I see in this news item – no more. We only wish moving a software company and their customers to a SaaS model was that simple. I would understand if they were talking about providing manpower to maintain an app at 50% of the cost (that is the core business of Wipro – providing cheaper resources in India for tasks that are commoditized). We, at Navatar Group, live and breathe this every day (we help software companies move to Force.com, salesforce.com’s Platform-as-a-Service).

So what is the big issue, you may ask? The most important issue is that SaaS is more than just a technical platform. It is a business model to help you provide a “service”. A software company will die sooner if they move their existing software to a SaaS platform in this fashion. They will cannibalize their existing revenue, tick off their salespeople, lose their customers to startups and will be writing checks forever to meet daily customer demands.

Cloud Computing is a paradigm shift. A software company mustn’t jump into the SaaS model just because it’s cool and everyone else is doing it or even because it’s 50% cheaper now. They will probably survive a bit longer if they stick to their core competency – selling a “product” as opposed to providing a “service”.

To learn more about the issues faced by large software vendors like Thomson Reuters and CODA that have done this successfully, download this free whitepaper:

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

Alok Misra

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.

Who is Rexlo Joe? He is one of the top Cloud architects today, with some of the most complex salesforce Financial Services products under his belt. (Read the Success story of Rexlo Joe).  He directs the Navatar Force.com team in New Delhi, India on all architecture issues.

How did he begin?  By simply jumping in.  Register for the Force.com Cloud Developer Challenge, happening now through July 31, 2009. By registering you will be able to submit your application for the challenge, and receive additional communications such as hints and tips.

Submit an application and you will receive a t-shirt (while supplies last) from salesforce.com. Impress us with innovation or creativity and you might be rewarded with an Apple MacBook Pro, iPod nano or touch.  Who knows, you may also be on your way to becoming one of the top Cloud architects.

Go to the Force.com Cloud Developer Challenge to learn more.

Are you ready?

I recently came across a good posting from Daryl Plummer at Gartner titled Delivering Cloud Services: ISVs – Change or Die or both!.  This article highlights the opportunity as well as issues related to an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) migrating to the cloud. It points out that “the vast majority of ISVs will have a very difficult time” taking advantage of the opportunity that a move to the cloud may offer them.

Why? According to the article, “It is not enough to just cloud-enable your software. You still have to deliver it as a service and that is simply not the business of most ISVs. So, you might have to change.”  Further, “some software vendors will either change their business entirely, or go out of business if cloud computing becomes the mainstream norm for delivery of systems.”

We agree. We at Navatar have been helping several ISVs (large and small), that have an existing On-Premise business, “cloud-enable” their products on salesforce.com’s Force.com platform-as-a-service.  We find that, not surprisingly, most ISVs are convinced that simply migrating their product to a cloud platform would turn them into a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) or a Software As A Service (SaaS) provider.  Since they do not understand the change required to shift from a product-based to a service-based model, their Cost/Benefit analysis for the effort is often flawed. As a result, they are able to SaaS-enable their product, but they struggle to make money on it.

For more on this subject, download a whitepaper that we recently wrote, at http://navatargroup.com/WhitePaper.html. You will learn about the experiences of ISVs such as Thomson-Reuters and CODA as well as opinions from Deloitte Consulting experts. The whitepaper is free.

Alok Misra

Will Google’s cloud-based email platform eventually kill MS office? We don’t know, but companies have surely started looking at Google’s platform more closely. Leena Rao of Techcrunch points out in her article at http://tcrn.ch/1rg that Google struck a partnership with Valeo, an automotive components manufacturer, to deploy Google Apps on the company’s entire global workforce of about 30,000 internet-using employees. We already know about Genentech adopting the Google Cloud platform for 20,000 users.

It will take some time before large companies start replacing MS Office. However as third parties create more commercial products in the Cloud that are tightly integrated with Google Gmail, docs, calendar etc, we may see more organizations considering the switch from Office to the Google platform. We will be testing the waters soon with Navatar’s Financial Services products for Force.com, taking advantage of the tight partnership between Google and salesforce.com. 

Stay tuned!

Alok Misra

We liked the way VentureWire said it – “noteworthy for who isn’t included…” The lead paragraph from their story is below and pretty much says it all.

Allan Siegert

Cloud Standards Effort Could Turn Into A Dustup
VentureWire, May 04, 2009

“A trade organization whose members include IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and a laundry list of other tech companies announced this week that it has formed a group to create standards for a way of accessing information over the Internet known as “cloud computing.” But the new effort is just as noteworthy for who isn’t included: Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and other Internet companies….”

It is very exciting to hear that salesforce.com has released Volunteerforce, for a company to manage their volunteering impact.  Navatar’s association with nonprofits has been long and deep – complex salesforce implementations at nonprofits such as AARP, United Way, Girls Inc, Council On Accreditation, Points of Light Foundation, participation in the salesforce.com Foundation Power of Us program, as well as my own role on the Board of United Way in New Delhi and in India overall.  Volunteerforce will be great for companies no doubt – it will also help nonprofits as more companies provide better mechanisms to help engage their employees in Volunteering activities.

Here’s the link to downloading Volunteerforce – it’s free

http://sites.force.com/appexchange/apex/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016cifEAA

Alok Misra

I recently read a few articles about what it takes to build your own Private Cloud. It sounds like a good challenge to undertake if you want to prove your credentials as an Enterprise Architect. However, if you are an ISV seriously considering a SaaS strategy to build a recurring revenue stream, lower costs, improve service or open new markets for your business, there may be more important issues to think about before you jump into building Private Clouds.

 
The most critical one, in my view, is of making the SaaS product profitable. You need to understand who will buy your product and why, what they will pay for it, what the costs of building, marketing, selling and servicing will be, etc. I can tell you, from first-hand experience (Navatar Group is a leading provider for Force.com products for the Financial sector), that it is easier to build a SaaS product, than it is to make money on one.

 
Why? Because SaaS customers expect more flexibility, adaptability and constant improvement – all at a lower price. Simply building a Private Cloud (or for that matter using someone else’s Cloud) and migrating your existing On-Premise product will not solve much. Before investing too much into Cloud development, it may worth spending some time to understand the cost of acquiring and servicing customers for your SaaS product.

 
For more on this subject, download a free whitepaper that I recently wrote, at http://navatargroup.com/WhitePaper.html

Alok Misra

NEW YORK, April 21, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Navatar Group, a global salesforce.com partner in financial services, today announced several new customers, including KStone Partners, Kelvingrove Partners and Zebra Capital. The firms are using Navatar’s customized CRM for Hedge Funds, a cloud computing application to manage hedge fund and fund of funds operations. Navatar CRM for Hedge Funds is built and run entirely on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com and is available on the Force.com AppExchange. http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=163434

It was at the same place the G-20 met but there were no protesters.

The attendance was massive and from some of the largest firms in Europe. Some estimates were 4,000 people. Discussions were lively! We’d tell you more but the true spirit of the event is well captured by the force.com blog – so we’ll point you there: http://blog.sforce.com.

Have a great weekend!

I’d like to invite you to participate in the launch of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest at the Silicon Valley Developer Force User Group at Santa Clara on March 18th, 2009. The User Group event will have a quiz as part of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest with exciting prizes and I will be the moderator.

The user group is committed to learning all we can from each other on building apps on Force.com with its rich tools and technologies.  This forum is for networking, questions and inquiries on the platform and technologies, and general interaction between members and interested parties. Please come and contribute to our/your success!

When

Wednesday: March 18, 2009?

Time: 10 – 12pm PST

Don’t worry if you miss the launch at the User Group event, though – you will still be able to participate in the contest by registering at http://www.navatargroup.com/slumdogcontest.html.

Look forward to seeing you in Santa Clara!

Ketan Khandkar.

Who

Developers, Power Admins, IT

Where

2700 Mission College Boulevard

Santa Clara CA 95054

408.988.1500

Speakers

Ron Hess & Mike Kreaden: Sr. Force.com Platform Evangelists

Ketan Khandkar (me), Principal, Navatar Group

Agenda (Subject to change)

10:00 am: Sign in, Reception & Networking

10:15 am: Force.com Apex code & Visualforce with Spring ‘09 platform updates & Demos

11:00 am: Short break/Networking

11:15 am: Slumdog developer contest launch (Navatar Group, sponsor of UG meeting)

11:45 am: Prize Giveaways

Welcome to the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest for Cloud Developers, happening now through April 30, 2009. Anybody can participate, starting today. We want to see how far you can take the Force.com platform, and the new Force.com Sites in particular. We’ll be handing out iPod nanos and iPod touches for interesting applications that show innovation or creativity.

Simply register to participate and learn more. There aren’t many rules to hinder your creativity. After the contest, we will give away iPod Nanos and iPod Touches to the five most exciting submissions. In addition, if your submission is one of the five selected, you will also have an opportunity to have your resume considered for joining the exciting and fast-growing Navatar team in the United States or in India. Sound interesting?

Why is it a slumdog contest? Because at Navatar we are doing some of the most exciting things happening today in the Cloud Computing world with Force.com, even though most of us came from humble beginnings. For instance, read the success story of Rexlo Joe who came from a remote village of Tamil Nadu, India a few years ago to become a top Cloud Computing Architect on Wall Street (read Rexlo Joe’s success story). With the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest, we want to recognize and highlight your talent and your work.

Launch of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest

We also invite you to participate in the launch at the Silicon Valley Developer Force User Group at Santa Clara on March 18th, 2009. The User Group event will have a quiz as part of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest with exciting prizes. Don’t worry if you miss the launch at the User Group events, though – you will still be able to participate in the contest by registering at http://www.navatargroup.com/slumdogcontest.html.

Have questions or suggestions? We’d love to hear from you.

The Navatar team.

If you’re building a serious industrial-strength app on Force.com, you’re probably beginning to think about the right design and architecture, after working through the basics. We’ve all been there – figuring out the optimal design to avoid rewrite later, make the app scalable, reduce development time & cost, ease of maintenance, etc.

Check out my paper, Ten Common Mistakes Architects Make When Building a Force.com Application, at the developer.force.com site. It provides several recommendations and best practices during critical stages of initial decision-making, designing and developing. These recommendations come from our own experience in building very complex products and apps on Force, including Navatar’s Financial Services products, and I’m very confident that you will find them useful.

You can also download a pdf copy at http://navatargroup.com/download1a.php?download=10MistakeWhitepaper.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts, as well as any additional advice you can offer from your own experience.