On-Track Arabia: Recent Comments

Comment on Suite Versus Best of Breed - The Debate Continues

2010-06-20T08:17:13Z

An interesting article from CIO magazine about suite versus best of breed:

http://www.cio.com/article/596832/Best_of_Breed_Or_Integrated_Suite_10_Questions_to_Consider?page=1&taxonomyId=3000

Comment on Is Software as a Service (SaaS) Really Dead?

2010-05-03T16:08:16Z

Thanks for your contribution Sandipan .. you might be surprised to learn that both Business Objects and Cognos were large users of salesforce.com before their acquisitions by SAP and IBM respectively .. in fact Cognos still uses salesforce.com today and their IBM counterparts seem to envy them because of how well sales and marketing are integrated in salesforce.com

Thanks Again

Comment on Is Software as a Service (SaaS) Really Dead?

2010-05-03T15:48:39Z

It’s not essential Microsoft to lose the game for Apple to win. – Steve Jobs.

It’s never a superior technology that dictate who will win and who lose, but a number of factors that includes market needs, trends, availability, affordability and ease of use. The corporate vision and strategy is also plays a crucial factor; again not necessarily always to be right or executed in right manner.

SaaS is a comparatively a new service channel. It could be a revenue source for both new dedicated players and for traditional players. There’s no harm for Oracle to open a new revenue source. Specially keeping in mind its past record, I won’t be surprised if Oracle bids for Salesforce.com in near future.

At the end, business is there to grow, strategy is there to adapt and change and technology is there to make our life simpler. The greatest contribution of SaaS till date is it has penetrated the untapped market.
For a start-up of 10, SaaS could be the answer to showcase its expertise and mature in time, but for an established $ billion organization, it’s a laughable alternative. So, there’s a space for all.

I am not the owner of the truth. It’s just few quick thoughts. Any suggestions/feedback/critics are overtly welcome.

Sandipan Nath

Comment on Suite Versus Best of Breed - The Debate Continues

2010-04-09T18:23:10Z

IBM is currently promoting an OVUM research paper titled Sole-sourcing BI from your ERP vendor: IT convenience or strategic business decision?
I guess it is not difficult for you to expect that the paper advises against the straight adoption of BI from your ERP vendor .. because it is not best of breed...the debate continues

Comment on Fashion, Cloud Computing, SaaS and SMEs

2010-02-27T18:23:28Z

Ayman,Multitenated model of SaaS is extremely interested topic gaining traction among potential Saas target.There is whole organisational as well customer mindset that needs to be changed.From Service provider perspective,sales function needs to understand that sales is not stopped at getting PO from customer but becomes account management at continous level as customer signs up with you.Due to customer starts tracking monthly performance,evaluate the ON monthly time performance of service provider which implies service management function of trouble ticket/problem management becomes agile on the web itself and more proactive as margins being thin and payments being monthly or quarterly,can't afford to have onsite support for profitable SaaS model across customer base.Customer acquisition of Saas I believe will work if service providers move away from traditional way of selling and giving more demo based web usage of applications that they intend to sell. But please note that don't expose 100% of functionalities to customer in trial as in conventional model,huge license fee is given but in this model monthly payments are given. well 20% of functionality may give you 80% of usage. So decide that 20% of the usage in phasewise properly to get happy profitable customer. Well architecture of the application itself will need a change if goes into Saas mode plus additional areas like virtualisation, security, subscriber management,provisioning, billing etc are wonderful operational efficiences to get customer quickly on line instead of waiting for LPO, then shipping the license and customer activating it after one week. If you can't provision in max of 48 hours,then you may not handle the unpredictable growth of customer who will expect it from Saas Service provider.

I would love to share thoughts on this area. Soon I would love to discuss on Iaas, Paas and Saas which each of them is going at its own pace of discussion

Comment on Fashion, Cloud Computing, SaaS and SMEs

2010-02-17T12:25:42Z

Very interesting topic, can you post some further information on this subject.

Anna Sullivan,
Women's Beauty Portal
Beauty Tips and Advices

Comment on Suite Versus Best of Breed - The Debate Continues

2010-02-16T13:37:28Z

Agree.

The "Suites" will never lead in new application fields as they are not innovators per se.

A small company developing from scratch can also deliver much faster than a large company can churn out integrated products.

In the end an inferior integrated product will probably work much better and at a lower cost than trying to mate best-of-breed apps from various vendors.

So the integrated suite will mostly be the best option and if you buy it for the anticipated mid-term future size then it should grow with your enterprise (or rather your enterprise would grow into it).

Only if you are an early adopter of something new - like some of us were in the early dot.com days - then you will have to integrate new stuff (best of breed at the time) with the "legacy" enterprise application(s).

Comment on Are you getting a return on your marketing - Part A

2009-12-08T11:17:20Z

Cool,

Keep up the good work,

Thanks for bringing this up

Comment on Why do most ERP projects suffer?

2009-12-02T16:35:39Z

Quite inspiring,

Keep up the good work,

Thanks

Comment on Volume or Value?

2009-12-02T04:30:10Z

Hi,

I would say a cohesive and comprehensive implementation of any leading ERP suite (SAP or Oracle) will easily have all the data elements needed to address the scenario I referred to in my example. On the other hand a so called 'best of breed' implementation is highly unlikely to have the right level of process integration to do so

I also want to say that the human parameters are all measurable, production cost takes into account workers time, sales cost takes into account sales compensation, etc.. again assuming a comprehensive and cohesive implementation of a leading ERP

The next point is on the Business Intelligence side, a smart BI implementation would allow an enlightened business analyst to quickly work through various what if scenarios similar to the one I referred to in my previous posting. But don't expect this to be in the form of pre defined reports, what if scenarios can never be fully predicted during the implementation but the BI system should allow users to simulate scenarios and work through them

I can comfortably say that you can achieve all this working with no more than 2 or 3 software vendors within your organization .. and that you can never achieve this if you follow 'best of breed' ..