The Aptaria Blog

Tangible Software chooses Aptaria for Sales Visibilty on the Salesforce.com Cloud

2012-01-18T07:44:00.000-08:00

We would like to welcome Tangible Software as the newest Aptaria client. Aptaria will be helping Tangible leverage Salesforce's Sales Cloud to achieve visibility into their sales pipeline produce reliable forecasts. The Aptaria team is partnering with Tangible software to implement Sales Force Automation (SFA). Aptaria looks forward to helping Tangible leverage social and mobile technologies during 2012 to improve efficiency and sales growth.

Salesforce Customization at Colliers: New Aptaria Interview

2011-08-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

We've done some of our most interesting Salesforce customization work recently with Kurt Stout's team at Colliers. We recently talked with Kurt about how Aptaria helps his government real estate group leverage Salesforce, from business development to Google Maps mashups. Check out the interview here.

New Case Study on Grubb & Ellis and USPS

2011-08-08T07:46:00.001-07:00

We've just released a new case study on our Salesforce Customer Portal implementation for Grubb & Ellis and USPS. It's a great example of using the cloud in the commercial real estate space, and of a non-IT B2B company leveraging Salesforce to satisfy a challenging client need. Here's the opening section of the study:

Grubb & Ellis (NYSE: GBE) is one of the world's largest real estate services and investment companies, with over 5,000 employees and 100 offices. GBE has successfully managed the real estate needs of numerous Fortune 500 companies and government organizations.

Yet as part of a contract with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) focused on site acquisition, GBE's existing toolkit was insufficient. USPS personnel needed an efficient way to acquire – and dispose of – buildings for post offices nationwide. And they needed to manage the entire process lifecycle, including site evaluation, resource and relationship tracking, and critical documents storage – all on a need-to- know basis.

Read the full case study here ...

New PaaS Case Study on SwiftCapital

2011-05-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

We're excited to release a new case study on our custom PaaS work for SwiftCapital. Here's the summary first part of the study:

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Aptaria helped a financial services company increase profits by moving its cash advance processing from a partner's platform to a customized PaaS solution.

Problem: Revenue Going to Competition

SwiftCapital provides small, short-term cash advances to restaurants and other retailers. Since 2006, they've given advances to over 10,000 small businesses, many of whom would have been turned away by banks due to the recent credit freeze.

Until recently, however, Swift lacked a platform for processing these cash advances. This led them to partner with a competitor and use its processing system, creating several problems:

Lost revenue, as Swift had to give a cut of each deal to its competitor
Limited control of the system, preventing Swift from automatically integrating with Experian and other credit rating agencies
Poor visibility into the deals pipeline and limited reporting, making it difficult to manage the business

Read the full case study here.

We're hiring!

2011-03-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

We're excited to have brought on a number of new clients in recent months. To help us handle this growth, we're actively looking to add new team members:

This is a great opportunity to help shape the cloud in a fast-paced environment.

Applicants must live in the DC metro area. If you're interested, please send your resume to contact@aptaria.com. Or if you know Salesforce talent looking for work, please pass this on. Thanks!

New Look for Aptaria.com

2011-02-17T05:49:00.000-08:00

We are excited to have just launched a completely new design for Aptaria's website. With this redesign we overhauled the site's look and feel to better reflect a forward-looking company in the fast-growing cloud space. We also implemented significant improvements to the site's navigation, making it much easier to find information about our services, our clients, and our team. We hope you enjoy the new site. Let us know if you have any feedback.

Aptaria predictions for Cloud Computing in 2011

2010-12-20T07:33:00.000-08:00

Its that time of year again when the thought leaders make their predictions for the new year. 2010 was a great year for Cloud Computing, despite headwinds from a still struggling economy. 2011 promises to be an even better year:

Aptaria Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2011

1. Aptaria expects the Gartner Hype cycle to continue in 2011, with more buzz surrounding Cloud Computing as we begin down toward the trough of disillusionment. More large companies will realize the benefits of the Public Cloud, beginning the planning process to eventually keep only the most sensitive of data/apps in an on-premise data-center.

2. On-premise Data Centers will continue to shrink in size and complexity as they will hold only the infrastructure of the most sensitive nature for the enterprise.

3. The oxy-moronic term 'Private Cloud' will be discredited for what it is: on-premise single-tenant software.

4. Mobile access to apps and data in the Cloud will be a top headline in 2011, continuing the storyline from the later half of 2010. iPads, iPhones, and Android devices will become commonplace in the enterprise.

5. The economic recovery will gain steam in 2011, accelerating the switch to the Cloud.

6. Companies will embrace social media in the enterprise; Chatter in particular.

Aptaria at Dreamforce 2010

2010-12-01T16:30:00.001-08:00

Aptaria is making the final preparations for another Dreamforce, the cloud computing event of the year (this time with a Holiday theme, as it comes late in the fall).

Aptaria's President and Chief Architect, Andrew Lawlor, will be helping out Aptaria's newest partner, GoodData, the new leader in Business Intelligence in the Cloud. Drop by, say hi, and catch Andrew demo how Aptaria's helped our client Nutricia (Part of Danone Worldwide) implement GoodData in just three weeks. See how Nutricia sales reps use GoodData to find actionable intelligence from within their sales data that was previously unavailable to them.

Andrew will be in the GoodData booth in the Partner Expo on Tuesday at 2pm and Wed at 3pm. We look forward to seeing you there.

-Andrew

Aptaria launches RapidCase for the Salesforce.com Service Cloud

2010-10-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Create Account, Contact and Case records with One-Click

Today Aptaria releases RapidCase for the Salesforce.com Service Cloud. RapidCase is available for a free trial on the AppExchange.

When customers call your support line, they want an answer to a question. Why make them wait minute after minute while service reps struggle to find them or create their case in Salesforce.com?

Aptaria RapidCase empowers reps to handle both first-time and existing customers much faster, cutting support costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

Faster Calls for New Customers:

With RapidCase’s streamlined record creation process, reps can create an account, contact, and case with a single click, all on the same screen. This is lightning fast compared to the current process of creating each of these records separately, which forces frustrated callers to wait through many clicks and page loads.

Faster Calls for Existing Customers:

With RapidCase’s custom search feature, reps can select the fields most relevant to your organization, allowing them to find existing customers faster and avoid creating duplicate records. Once the customer is found, RapidCase’s console enables reps to see all critical customer information on one page, including existing cases. If a new case is required, the rep can create it directly within the console.

The Results:
> More calls handled per hour by your support team
> Fewer duplicate records for your IT department to eliminate
> Less frustration and higher satisfaction for your customers

Benefits

· Answer caller questions faster

· Handle more calls per hour

· Eliminate duplicate records

· Reduce support and IT costs

· Boost customer retention

GoodData shakes up the BI world

2010-09-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Aptaria announced today that it has deployed GoodData, the Business Intelligence Platform-as-a-Service for its client, Nutricia. With GoodData, Nutricia has a powerful yet easy to use tool (even for those not technically inclined) that empowers its users to quickly spot trends in their sales data while there is time to react.

GoodData is a compelling BI option for Salesforce.com customers such as Nutricia because it too is based entirely in The Cloud. No hardware to buy, systems to maintain or networks to manage. BI has for a long time been considered the last bastion of on-premise computing, due to the volumes of data and number crunching required. GoodData changes that with a pay-by-the-GB model (more or less) with unlimited users.

Traditional on-premise BI vendors such as Microstrategy need to act protect their businesses. The days of multi-month deployment cycles are numbered. Aptaria was able to get Nutricia's sales data deployed into GoodData in a matter of days, including seamless integration with Salesforce.com.

Today Aptaria and GoodData also announced a partnership whereby GoodData customers will leverage Aptaria's Cloud sourcing expertise and Aptaria customers will enjoy the benefits of GoodData BI Plastform-as-a-Service. Through this partnership the two companies will continue to help companies of all sizes realize their potential in The Cloud.

In future posts I will detail more specifics about the GoodData products and how Aptaria clients are using it to mine actionable intelligence from the data they already have.

Aptaria Partners with Jobscience

2010-09-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

This week Aptaria announced a strategic partnership with Jobscience, the leader in cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) and Recruiting application provider. As a Premiere Services Partner, Aptaria will help companies and recruiting agencies implement Jobscience recruiting applications and integrate them seamlessly integrate them into their business processes and enterprise apps.

Jobscience customers will benefit from Aptaria's extensive experience building Apps on and integrating mission critical functions with the leading Force.com cloud computing platform. Jobscience, recipient of numerous awards for its class-leading recruiting services build on Force.com, is able to offer complete end-to-end solutions to its customers by leveraging Aptaria's domain knowledge.

We at Aptaria look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship for years to come.

The mainstreaming of The Cloud

2010-08-18T02:45:00.001-07:00

You know The Cloud has gone mainstream when it gets ink in The New York Times by three time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Thomas Friedman on August 17, 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/opinion/18friedman.html?hp). Friedman cites Cloud Computing as one of the drivers for our ever changing economy and the need for an ever more educated workforce. This, he argues, will ensure America's competitiveness in the new world economy.

I couldn't agree more with Mr. Friedman. Cloud Computing (along with the other drivers of the new world economy such as social media and mobile technology) is changing the way enterprises deliver services to their user community. American companies such as Salesforce.com, Amazon, Google (and now, finally, Microsoft) and a whole ecosystem of start-ups such as Aptaria, are leading the way. We will all need the best educated workforce in the years to come to further these gains and heal our economy.

GSA certifies Google for cloud computing

2010-08-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Critics of the Cloud Computing model in the enterprise took more heat this week as the Feds have formally approved Google's cloud for GSA use. The suite of apps were certified to meet federal cybersecurity standards.

Although this step was inevitable, it is more indication that all the fear, uncertainty and doubt being spread by on-premise software vendors are merely self-serving as they ready their own cloud-based offerings in an attempt to fight competition from cloud trend setters Google, Amazon.com and Salesforce.com.

Soon architects will need a good reason to NOT leverage cloud-computing technologies in their solutions instead of the other way around which has been common to date.

VMForce is coming

2010-04-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today Salesforce.com and VMware announced VMForce, a new extension of the force.com platform from SpringSource (a division of VMware), upon which enterprises can build and run Java applications.

This is exciting news in the world of Saleforce.com, as its proprietary programming language (Apex) and markup (VisualForce) technologies are considered drawbacks because of ramp-up time and vendor lock-in concerns. With this development Salesforce.com appears to be eliminating a major talking points to their detractors.

What remains to be seen is how portable Java applications and the Spring libraries upon which they are build will be. A fundamental axiom of Cloud Computing (and the primary means by which it achieves its cost-effectiveness) is multi-tennancy (i.e. the ability to run many enterprise's operations on one shared platform).

Clearly VMForce must prevent rogue enterprise applications from bringing down the platform by hogging resources through either malicious or poorly structured database operations. This alone will require significant re-factoring of existing on-premise Enterprise Java applications.

I for one will be paying close attention to details of VMForce as they are released.

Cloud Computing Shines during East Coast Blizzards

2010-02-15T17:32:00.000-08:00

The benefits of the Cloud Computing model were readily apparent this past week as the mid-Atlantic, North East and now the South all experienced significant winter storms. Vast areas of commercial and business districts lost power for extended periods of time. Many regions had repeated outages. Climate control units on roofs of these buildings frequently became clogged with snow which caused further data-center outages.

Numerous Aptaria clients were directly impacted by these outages which directly affected the ability of these organizations to run their businesses due to their continued dependence upon on-premise solutions.

The good news is that these organizations run significant portions of their businesses In-The-Cloud. CRM and custom apps built on Salesforce.com's Cloud didn't miss a beat. Salespeople around the nation (at least those outside the immediate path of the storms) were unaffected by the outages that hamstrung other critical apps.

The benefits of the Cloud model have never been more apparent. Its unfortunate that it can take an act of God before doubters see the light. There is no turning back. Business people took note that their sales teams enjoyed uninterrupted access their CRM apps but had no access to e-mail because their on-premise Exchange server at the office data-center had no power. These business leaders will have less patience for IT departments that insist on keeping significant infrastructure behind their firewall.

I expect Aptaria be busier than ever developing plans to Cloud-Source more and more critical business applications in the coming quarters. I also expect less and less resistance from the doubters and those that spread FUD.

Aptaria Services listed on the Salesforce.com AppExchange

2009-09-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

We are please to announce that Aptaria is one of the first services companies to have its offerings listed on the Salesforce.com AppExchange. Heretofore the AppExchange has been limited to companies listing Applications. With this new capability, Salesforce users are able to locate consulting companies that can help implementing, customizing and integrating Salesforce.com into the enterprise.

Aptaria is thrilled to have its services listed on the AppExchange. The AppExchange has been since its introduction the trend setting SaaS community where Salesforce.com user can find all manor of applications that extend and compliment the core Salesforce.com CRM.

Aptaria's service listing details the implementation, customization, and integration of Salesforce.com for organizations of all sizes. The listing can be found here: http://sites.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000001gNUiEAM

The AppExchange currently limits service listing to a single offering. Hopefully that will soon as many companies, including Aptaria, have numerous service offerings of relevance to AppExchange users).on the AppExchange. In particular, Aptaria offers Salesforce.com implementation, customization and integration services as a core offering, but also offers custom application development services on the force.com platform. Aptaria looks forward to splitting these services into separate offerings on the AppExchange soon.

Will Salesforce Embrace Private Clouds (Nodes)?

2009-08-28T08:26:00.001-07:00

Salesforce.com has been a steadfast opponent of the notion of a so called 'Private Cloud' because, they insist, with much justification, without the multitennancy inherent in the Public Cloud, the economies of scale don't exist. But there is another consideration in this debate: Security. Many companies and government agencies rightly believe that at least some of their data is too sensitive to be intermingled with other data in the public cloud.

The pressure to keep at least some data fully under the control of the enterprise is making Salesforce.com reconsider their entrenched position. Regulations and institutional paranoia, rational or not, are costing Salesforce.com sales. These organizations need another option from Salesforce.com before they take the plunge.

This is why I predict that Salesforce.com will 'alter' their position this year and offer their version of a 'Private Cloud'. Salesforce.com calls the collection of hardware and servers that form the infrastructure upon which their applications run "Nodes". They have a number of nodes today located around the world. Until now these nodes have been used for redundancy and geographic location reasons. Soon, I predict, Salesforce.com will announce a new node with the express purpose of serving Federal clients that want the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing that the only tenants sharing their infrastructure are also Feds. As a result of this offering their sales to the Feds will increase significantly.

Although this will be a significant change in position for Salesforce.com, don't look look for Salesforce.com to abandon their multitennancy evangelism. It will continue to be a core part of their cloud computing message. But they must take this step to satisfy their customers fears and paranoias.

Aptaria, a Force.com Value Added Reseller (VAR)

2009-08-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

Aptaria is delighted to be a charter member of the Force.com Value Added Reseller (VAR) program from Salesforce.com. Aptaria's clients will benefit from our status as a Force.com VAR through enhanced service and better pricing. With this program Aptaria deepens its commitment to the Force.com platform and the customers that are realizing much improved time-to-value when developing custom applications.

As more and more companies migrate more and more of their critical IT infrastructure to The Cloud, the Force.com platform is becoming a trusted alternative to traditional application platforms such as Java and .Net. Research has shown that developers deliver applications five (5) times faster than on competing platforms. This is on top of the already well documented benefits of the Cloud Computing model: No capital to invest, no hardware or servers to maintain, no operating systems to manage. Lower CapEx. Lower OpEx. And now faster development.

Java and .Net will continue to dominate fat-client applications such as graphic intensive applications, but for standard database driven, browser-based enterprise business applications, Force.com is the new preferred choice.

As a charter member of this Force.com VAR program Aptaria will be offering customers of all sizes unprecedented value when building custom Cloud Based applications. Look for Aptaria to announce new services taking advantage of the many benefits of this program in the coming weeks.

The Incredible Shrinking Enterprise Data Center

2009-06-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

Now that we're well into the hype cycle for Cloud Computing we benefit from some additional perspective. We now know that Cloud Computing isn't the panacea some would have had us believe. Large enterprises will likely never move their IT operations completely to the cloud.
One reason these enterprises will always operate their own data center (or pay a third party hosting provider to operate it for them): Institutional Paranoia

The reality is there will always be data and processes that are considered too sensitive to be allowed out of their organization's control. Presently there are federal and state regulations (i.e. HIPAA) that make it a crime for an organization to move medical data to the cloud. These limitations will likely be relaxed in coming years as Cloud Computing becomes more commonplace. Already there is a move afoot to allow medical records into the Cloud (on certified platforms).

The regulatory environment aside, many organization may feel that their mission (government) or market position (commercial) would be irreparably damaged should sensitive data or processes be compromised. The debate rages if Cloud Computing platforms are more or less safe than On-Premise installations. This debate will and should continue. The reality is that some data and processes will never leave the control of the Enterprise.

Organizations that conduct an analysis of which data and processes are sensitive and which aren't usually discover that only a small subset of their IT infrastructure is sensitive in nature. The remaining applications are a good candidate for a migration to the Cloud at the discretion of the CIO.

Cost pressures being what they are under current economic conditions and given the obvious cost benefits of the Cloud model it follows that that every application that can be pushed to the Cloud must be pushed to the Cloud.

The effect on the enterprise data centers will be significant, but not a death knell. Instead these data centers will first stop growing and then they will start to shrink. Instead of running a whole portfolio of apps needed to keep a large organization functioning, the enterprise data center will be tasked with minding the enterprize's most sensitive data and processes. No small task and one with its own unique challenges.

Try this in On-Premise Software

2009-05-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

Today Salesforce.com announced its Summer'09 release. Of particular interest is a new capability that allows customer service agents to collaborate, in real-time, with third-party service providers on one version of acase with all given access to the same information.

While it may be technically possible for two disparate companies to integrate their on-premise service platforms to deliver similar functionality, the reality is that it would be so challenging as to make it impractical. Conversly, a multi-tenant Cloud Computing platform such as Salesforce.com allows separate CRM instances to share information seamlessly through configuration and a few mouse clicks.

While this is a compelling scenario from the customer-support space, similar benefits can be achieved in other application verticals limited only by the imagination of those leveraging this technology. Expect to see supplies and buyers in a supply-chain leverage a similar technique to seamlessly integrate their ERP systems in the Cloud. Imagine how simplified a company's B2B infrastructure can become if all companies operate their ERPs on the same Cloud Computing platform. Security concerns would greatly diminish as data would be shared at the API level within the same address space.

The benefits of running an On-Demand Enterprise become more and more compelling as the drawbacks of on-premise software become more evident. B2B data sharing within the Cloud is compelling indeed.

SaaS versus PaaS versus IaaS; Which is right for your organization

2009-05-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

There is a healthy debate ongoing within the Cloud Computing community: Is SaaS, PaaS or IaaS best for your organization. Aptaria is pleased to offer its insight as enterprises re-think how computing services are delivered to their user base.

As enterprises of all sizes begin to realize the benefits of On-Demand computing, they are discovering that one-size-does-Not-fit-all. At Aptaria, we like to think of these three Cloud technologies as three points on a Computing Delivery Model Continuum (tm). On one side is the "Roll-Your-Own" datacenter where all computing services are delivered through hardware owned and operated by the enterprise itself. On the other end is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where the organization subscribes to services for all of its computing needs, thus avoiding the capital outlay for hardware and the highly skilled resources to maintain it. All things being equal, Aptaria believes the options on the right deliver computing services at a lower cost than those on the left.

Between these two extremes you'll find other options, some new to enterprise computing, some less so. For a number of years some large enterprises have leveraged Outsourced / Co-Location facilities in an attempt to lower costs. Virtual server technology (either on-premise or at an out-sourced datacenter) has also become popular in recent years as a means to further reduce hardware and administration costs.

New to enterprise computing scene are Cloud Computing offerings Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). These new options offer the promise to further lessen the costs of delivering IT capabilities.

IaaS defined
IaaS is a computing model whereby computing power in the form of virtual servers are available to customers on a massive scale. Enterprises leverage this computing power through the Internet (The Cloud). In this model, enterprises develop their own machine images (such as Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud -EC2) and instantiate and manage their instances for themselves. Amazon and its many partners are continually enhancing these capabilities and making it easier to manage these resources.

IaaS is attractive to many enterprises because they are able to leverage much of their existing expertise in general purpose programming languages such as Java or .Net. On-premise applications written in these languages can be modified (sometimes without much effort) to work on an IaaS service, providing significant cost benefits.

PaaS defined
PaaS is the newest member of the continuum. In this model applications are built from the ground-up to leverage this platform. PaaS is distinct from IaaS in that the computing unit (the server) is abstracted. The platform handles instantiation of servers for you, allowing the application developer to concentrate on building business logic. This added layer of abstraction is considered a big advantage in developer productivity.

Salesforce.com's force.com platform is the most popular PaaS available today. This platform provides a robust environment for the creation of any general purpose browser-based application. Numerous enterprises have built their entire business on force.com with excellent results.

Recently Google's App engine has announced Java language support (in addition to its original Python support). This enhancement makes Google's App engine a viable option for organizations looking to leverage the Java skills present in their enterprises, while realizing the benefits of custom application development in the Cloud.

SaaS defined
Although SaaS has been around for some years now (gmail for example), a definition in this context is helpful. Computing services delivered as SaaS are unique in that a specific application or function has been developed and sold to an enterprise on a (usually) monthly basis. CRM and HR related applications are frequently delivered through this model, but there are entrants in every vertical. SaaS vendors usually provide a means to customize the functionality of the packaged application so that enterprises can seamlessly integrate it into their business processes. Salesforce.com, for example, offers its Apex programming language, a Java like OO language, and an extensive API to build enterprise-class mash-up applications.

Aptaria places IaaS to the right of all on-premise, CoLo and virtual options because this technology frees enterprises from not only the cost of acquiring, installing and maintaining hardware and software, because the economies of scale inherent in this model allow for additional savings. However, the costs associated with maintaining your own machine images limits the costs savings possible through this option.

To the right of IaaS is Paas. PaaS offers additional value and cost savings by abstracting the machine instances, freeing the application developer to concentrate on the needs of the business, not the complexities inherent in computing infrastructure.

SaaS lands to the far right on the continuum. This reflects the fact that Saas offerings are packaged applications that, for many organizations, can be used out-of-the-box with limited customizations.

Aptaria believes that the Computing Delivery Model Continuum(tm) can help the industry understand the ever increasing computing options before them and can help identify which model is best suited to their organizations needs and strengths.

SaaS Maintainability

2009-02-23T16:54:00.000-08:00

An often overlooked, but critical benefit, of Cloud Computing and SaaS is Maintainability. With on-premise, licensed software, the client is responsible for scheduling upgrades to their vendor software.

This process is inherently labor intensive because the new version of the packaged product must be thoroughly tested in the client's environment. Usually this includes System/Integration testing, Performance testing, and User Acceptance testing cycles. The client must be confident the new version of the software works in their environment AND with all of the interfacing applications.

The process is significantly streamlined with SaaS. The client is relieved of the burden of testing the new software release in their environment, as the SaaS provider handles this for them. Many vendors plan numerous releases a year (most often quarterly in the case of Salesforce.com). With rare exception, the client fires up their SaaS application and automatically enjoys the benefits of the extra features in the new release without any action required.

A word of caution though: If your implementation of a vendor's SaaS application is integrated with one or more external application (be they on-premise or SaaS), you must work closely with the vendor to ensure that no APIs upon which your integrations depend are being depricated as part of this release. If you are dependent upon depricated APIs, you must re-write your interfaces to the new API or your intra-SaaS application business process will fail.

What does IT do in an On-Demand Enterprise?

2008-09-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

Many IT workers must be wondering what happens to their jobs if their employer becomes an On-Demand Enterprise. If everything runs 'in the cloud', what is left for an organization's IT department to do.

The answer is: Plenty. You'll just be more efficient in the process. Like a gas filling whatever expanded volume it is given, expectations always rise when productivity increases. This is not surprising, as companies react to their competition and adopt industry best practices. When something becomes easier to do (deploy and maintain an application), the customer naturally expects more and wants to spend less.

Nonetheless, the IT department of an On-Demand Enterprise is structured differently from today's IT groups which are focused on deploying and operating on-premise applications. Most significantly: There is no corporate datacenter to maintain. Relieving an organization of the burden of acquiring, building, operating, securing and maintaining its own data center (and the servers, storage, and software therein) is the single largest benefit on On-Demand Enterprise enjoys.

No longer do companies whose business models look nothing like a technology company need to employ teams of computer technologists to run their businesses. Note that operations skills will continue to be in great demand in an On-Demand world. The difference is that their paychecks will come from the cloud computing service providers (Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, EBay, Facebook) instead of the companies that buy applications.

In the place of a data center operations group, an On-Demand Enterprise has two functions: SaaS administrators (one or more per application) and vendor management personnel to manage the relationships with the SaaS provider (and enforce the vendor's SLA).

The architects, developers, analysts and testers reading this may be wondering: What about me and my function? The answer is that these roles continue to be critical to an On-Demand IT department.

To understand why all these skills remain critical to an On-Demand Enterprise, consider that most organizations will receive their SaaS applications from multiple disparate vendors (one can hope that there is never a monopoly in the cloud computing space), and that most all organizations have specialized business processes that will require customizations.

Analysts will continue to capture requirements as they did for on-premise applications. Architects will be needed to develop standards and frameworks by which disparate cloud computing services are stitched together. Developers will develop the customizations so critical to making a SaaS app compatible with the organization's processes. Testers will be needed to ensure that everything integrates well together and meets the needs of the business as the customer defined it.

Of course medium and large size organizations will not become fully On-Demand enterprises overnight. Data Centers will be a fact of life in most enterprises for some time to come. But forward thinking organizations that start utilizing SaaS and PaaS to run parts of their business will benefit from an ever shrinking data center.

An On-Demand IT group is a familiar animal, only its more efficient and delivers more value to the customer.

The End of the Corporate Data Center -- No Infrastructure

2008-09-07T14:20:00.001-07:00

With the advancing success of Cloud Computing, SaaS and PaaS, the writing is on the wall: The end of the corporate Data Center is near. No longer will organizations spend precious resources to:
- Purchase Server Hardware
- Purchase Data Center Hardware
- Purchase Data Center Software
- Employ engineers to maintain all of the above
One could say that an On-Demand Enterprise needs no IT Infrastructure:

These functions won't go away, of course. They'll be pushed to the cloud where dedicated cloud computing service providers will perform all of these functions. What's the benefit you ask? Economies of scale. Only when these tasks are commoditized and centralized (with redundancy) can real value be squeezed out of the system.

This notion is not new. The utilities have been practicing this for many decades. But the notion of purchasing your computing power from the cloud has only in the last couple of years become compelling as SaaS vendors have so drastically improved their offerings.

What is a CIO to do? That depends on the size of the organization and the maturity of the organization.

For startup companies the value proposition is compelling. Run every aspect of your business from the cloud. If you have regulatory restrictions such as medical data about your customers (or are especially paraniod about your data), keep only those datastores on-premise.

For small and growing companies that have a few on-premise servers: Strongly consider SaaS solutions as new applications are needed to run the business. When it comes time to ugrade existing on-premise apps, consider replacing them with SaaS apps instead.

For large enterprises, develop an On-Demand Plan. This plan should include a pilot On-Demand project for critical (but not essential) business function. Sales Force Automation (SFA) or HR are good choices for many organizations. This pilot project should allow the Operations group to slow or even halt any plans they have for expansion (either in the number of servers or the number of resources or both).
Once the pilot is successful, the organization will clamor for the cost efficiencies of On-Demand applications in other areas of the business. Soon, only the most critical of applications / databases will remain on-premise.

Now some are undoubtably asking, "What of our friends in the Operations group?" They are still needed, only they will work not for CIOs but instead for Cloud Computing service providers where their skills are critically important (that's where the servers are). Oh, and they will manage servers not by the hundreds but by the thousands (maybe tens of thousands).

On-Demand Integration model changes landscape

2008-08-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Enterprises of all sizes need an integration strategy. This strategy allows the organization's disparate applications, both on-premise and in-the-cloud, to smoothly run their businesses. Today there are numerous choices available for an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). I would put these offerings in one of four categories:
1. Licensed ESB
2. Integration Appliance
3. Open-Source ESB
4. Integration-as-a-Service (IaaS)

The established players are the Licensed ESBs from companies such as webMethods and Tibco (among others). Integration appliances such as those from Castiron have had success in recent years. The Open-Source movement has produced the Mule ESB. The new kid on the block is Integration-as-a-Service. Boomi is the IaaS vendor that has received the most press recently. I have blogged recently that IaaS is a technology whose time may finally have arrived, after numerous attempts at this in the past have failed.

Each of these integration strategies has its benefits and drawbacks. Licensed ESBs tend to require significant capital but are the most robust of the options and have the largest communities. An Integration Appliance, while somewhat less expensive than licensed ESBs, also are capital intensive. They also aren't as well established and thus have smaller communities. Open-source ESB (such as Mule) are becoming a better low-cost option as the communities around them have grown in recent years. As with all open-source software, the organization must have a significant depth of technology talent to ensure its success.

The new kid on the block is Integration-as-a-Service. As an integration strategy, IaaS has its appeal. This appeal stems from the benefits of any cloud-computing service: No servers/hardware, no data center, no system administrators, no software version upgrade cycles. These benefits are driving the adoption of cloud-computing across other segments and now those benefits can be realized with Integration as well.

The pricing model for IaaS is quite different from the other integration strategies. Customers usually pay by connection, the type of connection, and by transaction volume (including message size). This model isn't right for every organization. If most of your applications are on-premise (behind the firewall), IaaS may not be right for you. Single-points-of-failure when integrating with on-premise apps may also be a concern, although this will likely be addressed over time. But if the apps and services that your organization use are primarily "On The Cloud", (and more and more organizations are following this strategy) IaaS may be right for you.

Cloud Computing = SOA 2.0

2008-08-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

I would argue that current debate about how to define Web 2.0 is an exercise in futility. In the end Web 2.0 is a marketing construct that means everything and nothing at once.

Having said that, and at the risk of contributing to the blather, I posit another definition for the the industry to consider:

Cloud Computing is really SOA 2.0

To examine this, first we must understand the definition of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Before SOA, packaged and custom applications were islands. Interopperability wasn't a consideration. Applications (code) would be developed and never re-used and thus the same logic would be developed numerous times.

Along came SOA to the rescue. I would argue that SOA, in this context, is the means by which any application can call any other application, either inside or outside the organization's firewall, while respecting the security and governance rules of all parties.

IT departments spent much of the past decade Web Service enabling their enterprises and otherwise turning their companies into Service Oriented Enterprises.

This has set the stage for Cloud Computing. Without the 'anything can call anything from anywhere' capabilities that exist today, Cloud Computing would fail. (Note previous post on this blog that discusses the failure ofCloud Computing start-ups that were before their time.)

Enter Cloud Computing services such as Amazon's S3, EC2 and SimpleDB Web Services. Now the user need not know where there data is stored or where the hardware on which their processes are running is located. Entire applications can be (and are being) developed that stitch together disparate Cloud Computing services.

These services were not possible before the advance of Web Services and SOA concepts. So one could argue that Cloud Computing is the natural extension of SOA. Whereas SOA concentrates on secure and well governed interoperability, Cloud Computing leverages these capabilites to deliver the building blocks through which any application may be developed.

Is the market ready for Integration-as-a-Service?

2008-08-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

Over the past decade numerous start-ups have tried to sell integration software as a service. Invariably, all of these outfits failed (some in spectacular fashion). It seems the market just wasn't ready for them. Is the market ready now?

To answer this question first we must review the history of those companies that have attempted to enter this market. Grand Central communications may have been before their time. The company may well have called its services "Integration-as-a-Service", had the term been around a few years ago. They offered a means to integrate applications via Web Services in the cloud (although they didn't use the term 'cloud' either, as it had not yet been coined). The impetus for this and similar services was the advent of SOA and Web Services and the openness these technologies enable.

But Web Services alone wasn't enough. Enterprises still had many on-premise applications that needed to be integrated. A service hosted on the Internet couldn't help them. Grand Central made a lot of noise but was soon gone from the seen.

A few years later and the IT landscape has changed. Web 2.0 is now part of our vernacular. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is now recognized as a disruptive technology. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is gaining traction. In this environment one has to justify why any application or technology must be on-premise and behind the corporate firewall. The notion of Web Service enabling a legacy on-premise application so that it can interface with "the cloud" is rarely challenged.

All the pieces appear to be in place for the next Grand Central to come along and achieve glory. One company, Boomi, has received much attention (not to mention venture capital funding) recently with the intention to enter this market in a big way. The company has been around for a few years selling 'on-premise' integration platform software, but is making the leap into Integration-as-a-service.

How will the incumbant ESB vendors (webMethods, Tibco, Sonic) react? So far they are silent. Conventional wisdom is that no single vendor can offer both on-premise and on-demand solutions. There are too many trade-offs.

It is likely that additional pure-play vendors will enter Boomi's space before the end of the year, but they have the market mostly to themselves at the moment. We'll be watching to see what they do with it.

On-Demand means its "Always On" -- Implications for customers and vendors

2008-07-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Depending on your perspective, the "Always On" nature of On-Demand computing can be an advantage or a challenge. Traditional on-premise software companies left the challenge of running their software packages to their clients. Sure, these software companies would provide 24-hour on-call support as part of their maintenance packages, but it was still the responsibility of the end-customer to "keep the lights on" 24x7, if that is what the business required.
With the advent of the On-Demand Enterprise, software can now be delivered as a service. These Vendors not only develop software, but they must also run the software under the pressure that comes with 'Always On' expectations. There are numerous implications of this shift:

Customers can and do redirect scarce resources that would have historically been tasked with keeping the application available 24X7 from datacenters (hardware, software, electricity, security, firewalls, system operators, database administrators, etc...) to customers.
Vendors are most qualified to run their own software (although you could argue that many on-premise software companies never had to run their software in an environment as complicated as that of their largest customers.)

This shifts additional burden of running the software from the customer to the vendor. Utilities, such as electricity, phone, or cable TV, have understood this from the beginning. As software shifts to the On-Demand model, these companies will develop the institutional knowledge to keep their services 'Always On'. This is a win-win for the On-Demand Enterprise.

Considerations when programming in a multi-tenant environment

2008-07-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

Developing enterprise applications in a multi-tenant environment introduces additional considerations for the developer. All well designed On-Demand platforms (known as Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS) must automatically subject all resident applications to additional constraints not often found in on-premise platforms such as .Net or Jave EE. These additional checks ensure that all applications that are sharing common infrastructure are well-behaved and don't hog resources or otherwise adversely affect their fellow tenants co-located on the platform. Note that many of these constraints are enforced at run-time when the platform ungracefully terminates your offending query.

As just one example consider Salesforce's force.com platform and its Apex programming language. The force.com platform closely controls the execution of Apex with embeded SOQL statements (the platform's custom varient on SQL). Care must be taken to prevent a runaway query from hogging resources and slowing down everyone's execution time. This is especially of concern to those larger enterprises with more than 100,000 rows of data in one force.com object (table) because SOQL queries that hit such tables are more likely to be flagged for termination by the platform.

select id from asset where Parent_Asset__c = :a.id

where asset is an object associating Accounts with the Product2 to identify which products a customer has purchased and Parent_Asset__c identifies the id of corresponding asset on the Parent account.

This query appears innocent enough, and on most salesforce.com orgs, it would execute without a problem. But when it is executed against a table with more than 100,000 rows, the platform terminates this query with the following error message to protect the integrity of the platform:

System.QueryException: Non-selective query against large object type (more than 100000 rows). Consider an indexed filter or contact salesforce.com about custom indexing. Even if a field is indexed a filter might still not be selective when: 1. The filter value includes null (for instance binding with a list that contains null) 2. Data skew exists whereby the number of matching rows is very large (for instance, filtering for a particular foreign key value that occurs many times)

Medium and large enterprises can quickly accumulate multiple objects (tables) with significantly more than 100,000 rows. Clearly a different approach is needed for SOQL queries against any table that could potentially have more than 100K rows.
The solution for this client is to add additional constraints to the SOQL where clause as follows:

select id from asset where accountid = :childAccs.id and Parent_Asset__c = :a.id

This updated SOQL statement passes the additional force.com run-time checks and executes without incident.

Custom development on a Platform-as-a-Service brings with it additional considerations that must be handled properly to avoid nasty run-time errors. This is especially true for larger enterprises with large amounts of data (100K rows in the case of force.com).
With care, custom Apex applications can be developed in a way that meets the needs of the users without compromising the integrity of the multi-tenant platform on which it runs.

Its not "No Software"; Its "No Infrastructure"

2008-07-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

Salesforce.com has made its mark, in part, with its "No Software" mantra. I'm sure you can picture the word "Software" with a bright red X through it. This tagline has proven very effective in getting their message across (a message that I for one think compelling). But does Salesforce.com really save organizations from the hassles of 'Software'.
Consider the modern US corporation. Nearly every US company has traditionally "Rolled their own IT" because they didn't have an alternative. Corporate IT departments are currently responsible for (among other tasks) the:

- Management of a data center (with a raised floor, reliable power and tight physical security)
- Purchase and configuration of servers and other computing hardware
- Licensing and installation of a myriad of software packages
- Scheduleing of complex upgrades for each of these software packages as new versions are released (for fear of being dropped from support because they're running an older version)
- Continued employment of a small army of system administrators to keep the servers humming
- Continued employee a small army of DBAs to manage the data.

Does it make sense for a company not involved in the production or delivery of technology to do all of these things? Put another way, should General Mills, the cereal company, employee even one computer scientist?

Advocates of cloud computing would argue no. General Mills should focus on making the best cereal it can. It should buy computing power from service providers that offer it, much like it buys electricity and telecommunication services from companies that offer those services.
Still, all companies of any size (including General Mills) have their own unique business processes and they need custom solutions to satisfy their information processing needs. Cloud computing now offers platforms (Platform-as-a-Service) upon which nearly any enterprise class application can be built. In building these applications software will be written. In fact, Salesforce.com is experiencing much success with its PAAS programming language: Apex. Make no mistake, this is software. Even Salesforce.com itself advocates the use of SDLC (software development lifecycle) best practices when developing an application using Apex.

With this in mind, maybe Salesforce.com should change their tag line to "No Infrastructure". This would more accurately describe the benefits of On-Demand computing. I own't hold my breath.

Scalibility makes Cloud computing compelling to every enterprise

2008-07-17T17:51:00.000-07:00

The knock on SaaS (or on-demand /cloud computing), as we are told by on-premise software providers, is that it is only compelling for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). This notion is harder and harder for the on-premise folks to make as it becomes clear that one of the most compelling benefits of SaaS is its scalability.

The difficulty in scaling on-premise software is legendary. Consider the challenges facing a recent client in the non-profit disaster response business. During Katrina their systems went belly-up almost immediately and didn't come back up for weeks due to the tremendous increase in traffic experienced literally (not virtually) overnight.

In the aftermath of Katrina, the organization spent millions on new hardware so that their systems could respond effectively in the event of "two simultaneous Katrinas". Can you guess what their CPU usage has been in the years since? Never more than 2%. All this power sitting idly by waiting for the next national disaster. Scarce resources tied-up in technology that may never be used.

Now consider how this picture would change if the organization built this system using the Cloud. The Cloud could handle the limited load normally experienced by this system and it could scale almost without limit to handle the needs of a country during a national emergency. The vendors involved would bend-over-backwards to help, as did the vendors during Katrina, only this time they would be able to make a real difference.

One could argue that not many enterprises will ever need the scalability of a disaster response organization, but the lesson is nonetheless relevant organizations of all sizes. Enterprises constantly fall down when an application encounters unexpected popularity due to poor planning or execution. By leveraging On-Demand infrastructure, unlimited scalability is almost free because you'll only pay for what you use.

Enterprises of all sizes will soon realize that On-Demand computing isn't just for small to medium sized businesses. It may be that it is even more compelling for large enterprises.