Continue reading »]]> Recently Cloud Commerce had a press release announcing our efforts to refocus on the SMB sector. 

 Why?  We believe that small and medium sized business have the most to gain from Cloud computing. 

Addressing the ‘Mid-Market Challenge Gap’ with the Cloud

Using technology effectively is essential for companies to flourish in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Small and midsized companies are often unable to leverage technology because of the high cost and complexity of on premises solutions which makes it difficult for them to compete against large enterprises.  We call this the Mid-Market Challenge Gap (see  illustration). Cloud Computing drastically reduces these challenges by giving small and mid-market companies the same tools used by large companies at a reasonable cost.  Read more on our website: http://www.cloudcommerce.com/company/why-cloud-commerce.php

Continue reading »]]> In my last submission, I discussed how small to mid to mid-large companies can benefit from the economies of scale the cloud provides. Enterprise organizations have been consolidating their data centers for years to cut down on costs and create as much economies of scale as possible.
One industry in particular in my mind is uniquely suited to utilize the cloud as a service center for their separate business “subsidiaries”. This industry has probably given thought to the idea of consolidating I/T but simply can’t justify the upfront expense because their makeup is constantly in flux. However, the savings this can produce can make their returns that much sweeter when the time is right. This industry is the Private Equity industry.
When a Private Equity firm acquires a company, they really are not looking to operate that business forever. They simply see value where others may not and by helping that company in one way or another uncover that value, can achieve their goal of higher returns. Oftentimes this value can be achieved by streamlining operations, providing capital for investment, revamping processes, or group procurement. Streamlining I/T is often overlooked. Every individual portfolio company it would seem, needs an I/T department to take care of the tactical task surrounding I/T. It simply is a necessary cost.
Investing in a Service center for the portfolio companies simply doesn’t make sense for the Private Equity firm because of the ebb and flow of the organizations in the portfolio. That large investment may never be fully utilized because of too many variables that may not play out over time.
Cloud Computing though can offer flexibility to the private equity firm and give them the ability to streamline I/T without investing in the upfront service center. That is the basic concept behind the cloud. Consolidate I/T for your customers. By encouraging member companies to move to their pre-arranged cloud providers, Private Equity can remove cost and take advantage of scale without a substantial upfront investment. When a portfolio company is sold, that portion of the overall cloud being used, can be quantifiable severed from the rest of the portfolio. No hardware or people costs to allocate, just move the I/T operating costs to the sold organization.
Truly the Cloud is a game changer for all organizations, but the Private Equity community certainly could look to the clouds to increase value.

Continue reading »]]> “What did he say”?  Yes, I said take technology OUT of the technology decision. 

Business Owner Challenge

Business leaders in small and mid-market companies are many times put in a position where they have to make a key technology decision for their company.  Unfair odds when you compare this against large companies where business leaders most often have a large I/T staff and CIO to lean on. 

Here are a few possible technical challenges…

Joe: How do we implement a system so my I can keep track of my sales people?

Larry: What’s the best and most secure VPN to install so I can give my employees remote access to our systems?

Juliette: My back office system really sucks but I think I need to upgrade the servers before I can upgrade to the newest version.

So if you are a business leader that needs to make a technology decision for your company and feel either unqualified or uninterested…  take the technology out of the decision! 

Find the Real Decision

How?  Identify the real problem you are trying to solve.  Most of the time, technology decisions are motivated by the company trying to solve a fundamental business problem or to improve/optimize/save. 

So, identify the actual business need or problem that started the whole conversation.  While it might be two or three levels deep, it should be there.  As the following questions:

1)      What is the business problem we are trying to solve?

2)      What are the hard savings the company will realize?

3)      What areas in the company will be more productive?

If you can’t answer these questions with clear and concise answers, then why are you doing it?

With the problem or opportunity clearly identified from a purely business value perspective we can work on a solution.  Congratulations, you’ve successfully stripped away technology from the decision. 

Enter Cloud Computing

Let me first start by level-setting on what my definition of cloud computing.  Yes, I know that cloud computing has evolved to include almost everything under the sun (no pun intended), in the information technology space… but for now, I’m going to focus solely on Software as a Service. 

Business Cloud Computing services (SaaS) focuses on providing specific, business value oriented solutions – PERIOD.  When you look at the SaaS business marketplace, you’ll find solutions that address business needs, not technology solutions.  There is a big difference.  Ultimately, cloud computing gives businesses the freedom to focus on the business solution and not be burdened with the technical details it takes to run the system. 

 For instance, take the technical problems we brought up earlier.

Joe: How do we implement a system so my I can keep track of my sales people?
There are some great cloud based CRMs available that are easy to implement and introduce you to enterprise class sales management concepts and processes.

Larry: How do I give my employees remote access to our systems?
This may not happen overnight, but if your company runs all of its business services in the cloud, then the remote access problem is solved automatically.

Juliette: My back office system really sucks but I think I need to upgrade the servers before I can upgrade to the newest version.
Here’s another area where there are some really good cloud based solutions to run your entire back-office (and front office too), like financials, inventory, warehousing, manufacturing, HR, etc, aka – Cloud ERP. These systems typically take up to 40-50% less time to implement because the technical installation is already done.

I encourage you to learn more about SaaS Cloud Computing and how it can solve/improve real business issues not just solve technical problems.  I know many companies that have kicked the on-premises I/T habit completely and treat their I/T portfolio as value added services, not burdensome and expensive I/T infrastructures.

Continue reading »]]> Welcome to Cloud Commerce’s blog, we want it to be an exciting forum for all things Cloud Computing. We at Cloud Commerce are fanatic about Cloud Computing and believe it is a game changing approach to business technology. That being said, we want to do everything we can to educate business people about it. Why do I focus on business people? Simple, I/T people (like myself) tend to be pretty cutting edge on new technologies and Cloud Computing certainly has been receiving a lot of press in the industry lately (to say the least). So, our focus is on the business owner, leader, manager who typically wears multiple hat’s in their company – including I/T.

Visit us often and we will do our best to keep the new and usable information flowing. We want to hear your comments too and hope you’ll enjoy the blog!

-Greg

Continue reading »]]>

Great Plains customers are on the move to NetSuite, and NetSuite launched its 2011 Great Plains Switch Campaign to keep the momentum rolling. In fact, over a hundred Microsoft Dynamics ERP customers have switched to NetSuite, and a Gartner report on Financial Management Systems published just a few days ago highlighted the problems Microsoft is facing. In 2010, for North America Microsoft’s aging ERP products share declined close to 5% in 2010 – while NetSuite grew over 30%.

KEY DETAILS

• NetSuite’s solution provides: 50% better TCO than GP, built-in financial consolidation, integrated business processes, and real time dashboards and analytics that GP simply doesn’t provide.
• NetSuite will be conducting a webinar on April 19th with a panel of 3 customers that made the move to NetSuite – they’ll talk about their GP challenges, and
  NetSuite experiences. It’s the ideal event to hear why others have made the move to the NetSuite cloud.

The Top 5 Reasons Companies are Leaving Great Plains

Companies in just about every industry are leaving Microsoft Dynamics GP’s (Great Plains) antiquated architecture and bloated cost structure behind. Today’s businesses want more—they’re moving to the modern, integrated, web-native and cloud-based simplicity of NetSuite. Here’s why:

Integrated Suite that Streamlines Business Processes

Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) forces companies in most cases to manage their business on separate on-premise software packages—one for accounting, one for sales force management, one for ecommerce, one for service management, and often, one for warehousing—an approach that requires costly integration to get them to work together. The cost of implementation, integration and on-going application maintenance in such environments can be many times the cost of the software itself.

What’s more, patching together products can result in multiple islands of data and expensive integration projects that often don’t work the way you want. Many of our customers tell us that with Microsoft Dynamics GP, information often must be manually re-entered or batched into other applications—costing time and money. You can end up managing your business on incomplete information and guesswork.

In contrast, NetSuite integrates enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), and ecommerce capabilities in a single on-demand application, with editions tailored for specific industries.

Within a single, powerful application, NetSuite combines complete customer-facing CRM and ecommerce capabilities with back-office accounting/ERP and self-service portals for partners. As a result, it allows companies to unite fragmented data and automate processes from end to end. Your employees no longer have to re-enter data in different systems, rectify inconsistent or inaccurate data, or wait for batch updates.

NetSuite provides built-in functionality that Microsoft Dynamics GP just doesn’t offer. NetSuite provides you with one system for business process management and real-time visibility. Our customers tell us that use of NetSuite results in smarter, faster decision-making.

Real-Time Financial and Operational Visibility

With deployment of disparate systems in conjunction with Microsoft Dynamics GP, your business data is often spread across multiple departments, resulting in a lack of real-time visibility across key metrics needed to optimize business operations.

In contrast, NetSuite holds all corporate data in a single database, giving you access to your key performance metrics on a customizable, real-time dashboard. As a result, NetSuite enables you to make better, faster decisions. Employees can view and share accurate data in real time, leading to greater collaboration among departments and increased productivity across your business. In addition, full visibility into unified customer records results in more efficient and highly personalized sales, fulfillment, and service processes.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Microsoft Dynamics GP can prove to be an expensive and time-consuming business solution—both in the long and short term. With Microsoft Dynamics GP, customers pay large fees upfront for the software and implementation. But the costs don’t end there. Many of our customers who have switched from Microsoft Dynamics GP tell us that the escalating costs and complexity of running their business software environment using Microsoft Dynamics GP was a key reason for their defection.

For example, Microsoft Dynamics GP requires that you manage the hardware, servers, and databases, in addition to upgrading, troubleshooting, and maintaining the applications—that’s unless you want to pay a third party even more money to try managing it for you. You will have to spend the time and internal resources to accomplish an upgrade, or hire an expensive external contractor once a year or more to do it, if you want to keep your software current. This can be very expensive.

And if you’re thinking of paying more to run Microsoft Dynamics GP delivered as a hosted solution, then you need to know how a specific Microsoft VARs proprietary add-on hosting service compares with NetSuite’s data center and web-native SaaS application. With NetSuite you get a data center that has rigorous financial and security certifications including SAS 70 Type II, PCI DSS and EU-Safe Harbor compliance. You get uptime guarantees with a 99.5% Service Level Commitment and availability transparency published at status.netsuite.com. You get an application that’s upgraded twice a year—automatically. And you get a solution that’s designed for the web and is 100% browser-based so you can securely access it from anywhere.

NetSuite is delivered as a web-native Software as a Service (SaaS) application as standard and at no additional cost to you, With NetSuite the cost of integrating disparate systems is eliminated, and there is no on-going cost of maintaining on-premise applications. You pay by the number of users per month. NetSuite manages your application, upgrades the software, and provides Service Level Commitments together with reliable back-ups and restores as standard.

Ease of Implementation, Customization, Maintenance and Use

Built-In Multi-Subsidiary Management and Financial Consolidation

Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) can consolidate multinational financial information for month-end reporting if you run separate Great Plains accounts and use external reporting tools, but that’s about it. In contrast, NetSuite OneWorld is the first and only on-demand system to deliver real-time global business management, financial consolidation and visibility to multinational, multi-subsidiary companies.

With NetSuite OneWorld, you can manage companies with multiple subsidiaries, business units and legal entities all from a single NetSuite account, seamlessly handling different currencies, taxation rules, and reporting requirements. You get instant visibility into overall performance and the performance of all subsidiaries and geographies. Individual users at the local level get an application in their language and can transact in the local currency with local taxes and financial compliance fully enforced.

Continue reading »]]> If you’re considering hosted Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV, or AX, then it’s time to lay out what the stakes are.  Legacy software designed back in the 1990s simply running hosted is not cloud computing. As Gartner puts it, any company that falls for this ruse is in for a “nasty shock”. Know that solutions designed for the cloud deliver
value that hosted simply can’t achieve – they’re easier to access, easier to customize, and easier to integrate.

A new NetSuite whitepaper provides Gartner quotes, IDC comparisons, and even quotes from Microsoft executives themselves as to why cloud solutions are superior to
hosted solutions. It provides 9 facts about a true cloud vs. a hosted solution across topics such as upgrades, economies of scale, self-service, integration, and customer service, while also busting myths that Microsoft is spreading about real cloud solutions.

INDUSTRY PROOF POINTS

• “Suppliers run the risk of confusing and antagonizing buyers if they persist in this approach. Enterprises run the risk of getting nasty shocks when the thing they thought they were buying turns out to be something altogether different.” – Gartner
• “In truth, multi-tenancy matters even more to buyers, because it’s what makes the difference between a SaaS application that’s destined for rapid obsolescence and one that will continue to evolve with the cloud and all the wealth of possibility that’s opening up in the connected web” – Phil Wainewright, ZDNet Blogger
• “While Microsoft Dynamics has over 300,000 customers, we believe it will lose share in the long run to other vendors with more comprehensive SaaS solutions, such as NetSuite.” - Jason Maynard, Senior Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities
• And best of all, right from the horse’s mouth: “Apps should be designed specifically for the cloud. If you move your existing apps into the cloud, they don’t take advantage of all the features the cloud offers. If you’re just putting applications onto a virtual machine, you’re just putting a horse’s head on the front of a car. That is just not the optimum way to take advantage of the cloud.” – Rolf Harms, Director of Corporate Strategy, Microsoft

Continue reading »]]> Multi National companies with multiple subsidiaries have spent millions of dollars to consolidate their I/T as much as possible by building regional data centers. They spend 10s of millions of dollars constructing a “fortress” for their data to be protected against disaster and less than honest individuals. Luckily they have the needed capital to invest in their future this way, and will realize a tremendous amount of savings over the long term.  These economies of scale are created by spreading costs across all their employees versus just one division.
The same benefits these service bureaus provide their holding companies can be accomplished for the small to mid, to mid-large organization that simply cannot generate the economies of scale.  They will spend the money to build I/T power facilities, but at much higher costs per user than enterprise organizations. In fact they spend more money respectively, but get less of the security, disaster recovery and output because they can’t spread the cost across enough people.
Enter the Cloud…..Public cloud computing answers this dilemma. By offloading specific applications to the cloud, organizations can take advantage of the economies of scale without the upfront capital. By default you get premium data centers with the highest in security and lowest in per user cost. This is achieved  because you are now one of many companies using the same infrastructure but only paying for your share. Sounds like the Electric power industry to me from long ago. A safe, secure and reliable internet is simply the grid that allows it to happen.
Take advantage of the economies of scale and release yourself from the burden of ownership. Level the cost playing field with the largest of competitors by utilizing the cloud for your small to mid-sized business.