Posts by Ian Moyse 23 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Aug 2012
Interesting to see HP moving more to hardware with this and its selloff of its software division. As others focus on moving to the new world of cloud, mobile, IOT and more profitable innovative sectors HP decides to move more to the old world and print, a lower margin commodity world with users increasingly printing less and less as they digest content digitally across devices !
This isn't the 1st and won't be the last to happen. The sooner the better that we get a simpler and new ID method such as utilising a mobile phone biometric validating app to authenticate to sites, removing the clunky and old methods of username and password that we have lived with since the inception of computing. These methods are fundamentally flawed and combining it with the poor authentications of DOB, maiden name, etc still used, with data that can readily be harvested from social media and public sources the public are left wide open to attack.
Cloud, internet of things, SaaS, etc, whatever you call it discussion continues to rain with pros, cons, myths and change. The growth of the sector has driven increased change, conflict, disruption and engagement which will all increase undoubtedly in 2015. Good valid comments from Frank here as to how the industry is having to shape up regarding laws, opinions and needs as this becomes mainstream for us all.
Training is not the be all and end all, but adding it and proof of certification to real world skills and experience can only add to your value.
I have been in IT a long time and in cloud 8 years and was 1st in the UK to pass CompTIA cloud Essentials exam. Learning and exams doesn't replace experience, nor does experience replace the need to continue to learn !
Is this smart on MS side of Salesforces ?
MS reps will be using this against Salesforce deals and Salesforce reps will angle the same and that this is MS realising SFDC is the dominent platform.
Meanwhile both will continue to allay to customers that CRM success is all about the software alone, whereas a huge % is the implementation to your business needs, supplier expertise and relationship and with both of these large vendors any CRM implementation will come from 3rd parties, some good some not and most expensive.
Good real world independent feedback from customers of both systems is freely available at G2 Crowds website.
Salesforce despite being big, fails yet again and users pay the price. Salesforce customers pay high prices for the service, the highest in the CRM sector and yet this is a re-occurence that appears to be increasing.
Good job Salesforce contracts as standard have no SLA for availability !
For Salesforce customers there are some easy options - checkout independent comparisons of other CRM's against Salesforce at the G2 Crowd CRM comparison site and find examples such as Workbooks which for UK clients for example keeps data in the UK, is 50-70% cheaper and who won CRM of the Year 2014 and 2013 against Salesforce !
Keep watching as an increasing % of computing power becomes cloud delivered and consumer expectations of pricing becomes more radically different to we have seen before. Users now have a baseline of 59p apps and cheaper computing power and storage and will start to question even the smaller costs for robust solutions. The days where a software vendor could charge premium margins is of a world we may soon forget.
Another (HP !) example of a legacy hardware vendor weathering the market changes and the move to BYOD, cloud and a different way of working. Customers are burning kit longer, prices are reducing and brand equity is more neutralised. Unfortunately we can expect to see more of this in the IT sector for the next few years as the market adjusts to a more agile, nimble and internet based world.
So Oracle thinks by having cloud it can just own cloud. It has the reputation of an Enterprise solution and one that as others have stated has locked in customers to its platforms and milks the renewals and upgrades/maintenance, areas that you cannot do in Cloud where this is inherently included.
In the Small to Mid market firms which represents a good 95% + of all businesses by volume Oracle is not a prime choice vendor and this is the area where cloud has the most benefit and reach for new opportunities.
Interesting also that it slates Salesforce as a target when it only recently announced Salesforce as a partner for its underlying database technologies.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks
As usual an ironic Microsoft failure to add to their recent retreats on Windows 8 and the Xbox and their several cloud outages due to forgetting to renew their own security certificate!
Bigger isn't always better and in Microsoft's case it seems to leave an increasing number of gaffs to add to their continued record of Patch Tuesdays to fix problems they didn't spot in the 1st place.
Ian Moyse
Another Microsoft cloud failure, following a period of 2 years of many examples of Microsoft getting this wrong on Dynamics, Azure and 365. Often their is the belief that bigger is better, but in the cloud this does not bear true.
Getting it wrong in the cloud if you are big means you devastate more clients and in todays social medium the world will know and quickly.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks
Perhaps this is why info such as the below appears on Salesforce in addition to a number of outages they incurred in the past 2 years. There are many strong alternatives to Salesforce and independent comparison can be found at the G2 Crowd analysis website.
http://www.crmsearch.com/salesforce-hosting.php
Surprisingly, Salesforce.com provides the least effective Service Level Agreement (SLA) in the SaaS CRM industry. In fact, Salesforce.com generally doesn't even provide an SLA unless the customer requests or negotiates it. Even then, the SLAs are not strong as their uptime thresholds fall below competitors and their maintenance windows are plentiful.
a) proves that bigger and big brand is not always better
b) that not all cloud vendors are born equal
c) that asking if a vendor has SLA's is a good start - Salesforce as standard does not provide SLA's
Check alternative CRM solutions to Salesforce at this independent site www.g2crowd.com
Ian Moyse
Workbooks
Many choose Microsoft cloud services because of the name and believing bigger to be better, but this proves again that MS is not the be all and end all. After a number of Azure, Dynamics, 365 and other outages in the past 24 months,
Typically the smaller more focused cloud vendors are delivering a more reliable service than Msoft and at least with such vendors if something does go wrong you can speak to someone.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks
I have been selling cloud services for over 8 years now and dealing and talking to clients about both data sovereignty and data liberation (how easy it is to get your data back should you decide to change service and in what format you can extract it).
We have seen an increase in customers wanting local EU or UK data sovereignty and showing mistrust of the vendors hosting the data in the USA or even hosting on EU shores but owned by a USA firm! Rightly or wrongly this is customer perception and feeling and it may hinder cloud adoption or lead them to localised EU vendors who are bringing strong solutions ot bear that are often more functional or cheaper anyways, Compare CRM's at G2 crowd.com or take a look at the Huddles of the world compared to Sharepoint for example.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks.com
Channel resellers are increasingly being squeezed on a number of sides.
The economic climate, customers buying smarter with the usefulness of open information on the net combined with a longer burn on existing kit, less refreshes = less purchases to go around. Add into this a pressure on vendors and distributors who are reviewing channel programs and discounts and making cuts for their own agenda's and a wealth of business moving to the cloud with customer procurements going often to new supplies, resellers and vendors where the prevailing reseller has not introduced cloud in protecting their legacy business from cannabilisation.
Add these together and we have already seen 2e2 and many others in the channel go in the UK and we have analyst reports that between 30-70% of IT resellers are expected to consolidate or go in the next 3 years.
Times are hard, but yet many still prevail and are growing sales and margins in the same period. Change is essential, its hard work, but fruitful.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks.com
The real issue here is that Mimecast positions themselves as a business continuity provider, a cloud system that protects customers from email outages. Whilst they filter email and provide archiving their key differentiator been delivering continuity to ensure always on email delivery to users no matter what and underpinned by a 100% SLA!
Mimecast has a strong record of service delivery over many years, but unfortunately their customers will quickly only remember the pain of today, emphasised further from being sold on using Mimecast to gain assured email continuity.
What may really hurt Mimecast is they proudly promote a great deal of large legal firms relying on their service, with users being lawyers who demand always on email that they rely on for critical matters. I wonder were any court proceedings effected today by lawyers not getting information they needed when it was required and what the knock on implications and discussions ensuing from this with the their IT departments will be over the next few days?
Unfortunately for Mimecast they have made a strong rod for their own back in very public touting of their 100% SLA http://www.mimecast.co.uk/About-us/Opinions-on-Email-Management/Dates/2011/1/Email-Continuity---Five-9s-/ which customers are touting thick and fast on Twitter.
Ian Moyse
Having read the comments here it appears the author has an axe to grind with cloud. Having been in the cloud arena for the past 8 years and sitting on the board of many cloud associations and organisations I have a more pragmatic view that users should choose the most applicable form factor (be it cloud, cloud/on network mixed or on network) for each applications use dependent on the need, cost and feeling about data held in each case.
Limiting yourself and avoiding cloud will put you at a disadvantage in terms of flexibility and adaptability and in business potentially lose your competitive edge. The customers are choosing with their feet and purses as many major historic bricks and mortar brand approaches have already found out to their peril. Take Blockbuster video, once the darling and now the gone or surviving against Netflix and lovefilm serving up online movies. Take Tower Records gone against the online music world, books stores, Kodak photography and many more join this throw.
Cloud with the demands of mobile access from any device delivers more flexibility than we have ever had and be it public or private cloud is here to stay. We will see an increase in the speed of innovation and new uses for hosted services and an increased demand as younger users expect and demand availability anywhere, anytime on any device at a low price point that traditional mediums cannot deliver.
If you are afraid of losing music in the cloud, buy it on standard media, ripit, upload it and gain the benefits of cloud with a localised traditional media copy for your peace of mind and safety. However bear in mind this will cost you more in money and time to achieve. Yes Cloud may have had outage examples in the past year, but one local device outage or loss later and a user will be switching to cloud and relying on it for backups quickly. There are bad stories in any medium, and the story of one user’s lost kindle files is rare and amongst the volume of users offers a low chance it will be you. You can argue this the same for any failure, I am sure there are those out there who have had their local device just crash and burn and not switch on as expected at a random moment leaving them high and dry.
Ian Moyse
www.ianmoyse.co.uk
A good contributory article. Cloud is one of the most disruptive IT changes ever to effect the IT supply channels and there remains a mix of worry, fear, misunderstanding and back turning from resellers to cloud, led by fears of vendors selling direct, a lack of understanding how to structure a sales business around it (commission schemes for example) and a concern over cannibalisation of existing revenues and renewals. We have recently watched as a variety of industries have been disrupted by form factor change; Video Rental has been all but killed by online sales and on demand providers such as Netflix and Lovefilm; The music stores struggling or going as Tower Records did effected by online sales such as Itunes; Photography we have seen Kodak vanish with more now keeping photos electronically and storing them online; these were long time large industries rapidly changed by a different delivery format being made available the consumer which was faster, cheaper and more flexible, to believe this disruption won’t displace the traditional IT solutions is naive to say the least. Once a customer has a flavour of cloud, expect more growth to follow, the snowball has started as shown by th 73% of customers already using cloud and questioned in the Cloud Industry Forum Cloud Adoption Survey in 2011 who expect to increase their use of cloud in the next 12 months with 96% satisfied with the results of their cloud services in use thus far. With this it is key that the channel figures out how to engage both with customers and vendors (many of whom will be new engagements) in the cloud world, the internal business model required and the value the channel brings to supplier and client.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks.com
The G-cloud Cloudstore is a necessary evil. The government needs to be seen to be forward thinking and supporting change and the cloud so it spends likely a large sum of money to launch and create this framework and vendors have to be seen to take part, less not being on there hurts you negatively. However I concur a lot of the purchasing will follow the same historical routes until any mandating can be put in place (if it even can) to drive government departments to consider the cloud, British Suppliers and SMB/E providers against their legacy large vendor brand name contracted supply chains.
Ian Moyse
Of course if the cloud provider has architected smartly it will already have a solution that copes with low bandwidths and the many that do not have high high speed internet yet!
We for example have coded to assume a low throughput and to maximise the use of the browser side processing client to handle as much as we can of the user interface to ensure usability and performance speed.
Ian Moyse
Workbooks.com
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