Can Apple Take Over the Enterprise?
At a recent Apple March 6 Event, Steve Jobs and some of his team outlined both the iPhone Enterprise Beta Program and iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). While the long awaited SDK has been eagerly devoured by developers across the industry, I was keenly watching the Enterprise Roadmap.
In a nutshell, this allows the iPhone to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server using ActiveSync. Thus, the end-user can receive “pushed” e-mail, calendar events, and contacts. This one area signals a storm that is long overdue in the world of technology, the introduction of a truly disruptive technology such as the iPhone & iPod Touch.
For a long time, Microsoft has catered to the goliath of enterprise business, giving this audience just enough of what they needed to hook them into an ever growing web of Microsoft products. They quickly understood that businesses wanted integration across their networks, to bring a common user interface (UI) to everyone. Why spend a lot of time and money on integrating software platforms when you have at least a promise of integration with a suite of solutions by one provider.
Microsoft leveraged their dominance in the desktop market to grow into the office suite, back office products, and even the mobile market.
Apple on the other hand had floundered without Steve Jobs at the helm, and has been playing catch-up for quite some time upon his return. However, by “the 4th quarter of 2007, the iPhone surged to a 28% share of the US converged device market…” (TechCrunch). With the veritable flop of Vista (to date), the surge of adoption of the iPhone and iPod products, and the launch of the iPhone Roadmap Apple stands poised to ride a cresting wave of unfounded end-user adoption…
Even though many people are making a big deal out of the iPhone, there are some other key things that hold true adoption of the Apple offerings back, and those are 3rd party application integration. Sure you can run Office 2008 on a Mac, but does it really work? Does it really play as well with the OS as it might on Vista?
Enter virtualization technologies… and I’m not just talking about Bootcamp or parallel here people; there are revolutionary new offerings whereby applications themselves can be pushed to the desktop for an extremely rich user experience while allowing IT an easier path to management.
And let’s not forget SaaS (Software as a Service). The ability to have an almost desktop-like experience is quickly replacing the “old” model of licensing and extending the enterprise across work and home computers securely. IT staffs are scrambling to handle more diverse fleets of hardware and software every day, and the resurgence of centralization (e.g. virtualization and thin/web clients) is gaining some tremendous ground and attention.
All these things play to Apple’s advantage, as the underdog. However, these are just as easily capitalized on by others as well. So what is the catalyst that will tip Apple over the edge to gain true marketshare? Giving customers what they want how they want it… see Starbucks!
I’m going on record! I predict that IF apple continues on its iPhone Roadmap, continues to develop disruptive technologies (as they have proven they can do), and can keep giving customers what they need and want, in 5 years Apple will have between 25% - 45% marketshare in the business desktop/notebook space.
Yes, Apple can take over the enterprise! Next, can Apple unseat RIM BlackBerry?
What’s in a News Release?
Does everyone artificially inflate their market position in a news release?
Greenville, South Carolina - March 9, 2008 — Ken Stewart, a market leader in hyperbolistic blathering (HB) development, announced today that he has has partnered with Hush Puppies, industry leader in the soft suide shoe market, and together have declared they will take over the world…
I mean come, on… Who actually reads that 1 news release and says, “Oh, Ken Stewart must be the leader in HB development. I need to do business with that winner!” Do they believe that by repeating the mantras they will come true? “I’m a smart and funny guy, and darn it, people like me!” Maybe they should try another one, ”There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home.”
Managing Documents in the Small-to-Medium Business: Dangers of DMS in the SMB… (Part 2)
Many companies have often wrestled with the idea of “owning” software. While most people now understand the concept of intellectual property, business owners are feeling the pain behind keeping up with the barrage of updates, patches, and major releases of the army of software products now required to run their daily business. To mitigate risk, many companies see a value in outsourcing areas of their business that are not their core competency. This has led to the SaaS (Software as a Service - see SalesForce.com) model gaining ground. The thought is that it is typically cheaper to rent the software than to own it. In my experience stand up time is very quick, but integration costs and subscription fees can get to be a little expensive over the life of the solution.
While SaaS in the DMS space has a bit to go before it reaches any true level of maturity, a fast growing example of seed-change can be seen where political campaigns are turning to Salesforce.com’s Campaignforce to help control costs, increase the speed of deployment, and leverage the social-network phenomena to gain votes. Most channel or direct software vendors see this type offering as a loss leader to create a funnel in order to bring more customers to their core offerings. To some extent, this is a bit concerning in that an offering such as this would not necessarily be the best solution for a customer, if a channel or direct vendor is only angling to bring a customer to their core offering.
There also seems to be a division within the SMB segment itself that is causing some introspection among the software vendors and service providers alike. Much like the “copier-industry”, this segment 1 customer base does not have the expertise or budget to manage intensive software projects, nor do they feel they need a “big software package” to manage their business. Generally, this segment 1 ranges from 1-10 seats (possibly ranging to 25), whereas the medium sized, or segments 2-4 customers might have 25-250 seats (ranging as low as 10 or as high as 500). The truly ’small company’ (less than $1 million in annual revenue) simply does not have the cash flow to invest in an offering unless subscribing to a SaaS model, nor does it want a big, complex software package to manage - as being nimble in the market place is a key advantage to scrapping with the big guys. However, some savvy business owners quickly realize the opportunity to apply this type of technology to their businesses, and the ability to offset future costs. As this type of business gains acceptance among the general SMB business community, expect DMS in the segment 1 and 2 markets to grow dramatically. Much like the HP inkjet printer business, the goal is to make money on the residuals across a large base of customers; this helps keep the costs low for the software vendor and partner and keeps prices competitive for end-customers.
With all of this said, there are many dangers that are lurking around the corner for every SMB, some of which have been mentioned above. The greatest obstacle I have seen is still project success and cultural acceptance, by far. While IT project failure has decreased over the decades, it is still dangerous to embark on IT projects in general. The Standish Group, widely regarded as the leader in IT Project risk assessment, publishes the Chaos Report. In a 2006 study, only 35% of IT development projects were considered successful, whereas a project that encountered cost or time overruns or did not meet user needs requirements was a staggering 46%. Even though this study references software development projects, I can tell you from experience many projects are doomed to failure before they even start.
The responsibility of conducting due diligence still rests squarely with the prospective customer - caveat emptor; it has become obvious to me the CMS/DMS companies have inventory to sell and that’s what they aim to do - even if the solution is not everything the customer needs. Only a provider that is willing to truely form a partnership is worth evaluating in the long run, since their business is dependant upon your success.
Integrating emerging technologies into a business can bring important benefits to the company. Look at how revolutionary facsimile technology was at the time, and what a game-changer e-mail has become. An owner must be extremely cautious not to bet the farm on an emerging technology unless they fully understand the value-benefit proposition as well as the cardinal rule, the culture must adopt the solution or it will fail. DMS technology will be important to decrease file-room sizes, allow for quicker access to documents, and aid in the processing of “hard-copy” documents. For all those reasons, I think it is a growing priority from which SMB owners cannot afford to turn away; however, they do have to ensure they understand their business and choose a good technology partner that understands theirs.
No More Fuzzy Math?
I sometimes tune into NPR if I’m feeling a little liberal and want some talking on the way to or from work. I can’t listen to too many consecutive days of it or else I start feeling a little monochromatic - and have some strange feelings of voting for the Clinton family…
At any rate, I stumbled across this little piece on a change in the math curriculum for the state of Massachusetts. It was an interesting listen in that evidently the Bush administration commissioned a study to determine why the U.S. is falling so far behind in international math testing (that’s a whole other post or 500).
In listening to some of the interviews of faculty, I was rather impressed that the public education system actually built a syllabus around scientific research on how people learn. Let me tell you from first hand experience, that surely wasn’t the case when I was going through school in SC a few years back.
Kudos to Massachusetts…
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Dangers of DMS in the SMB: Managing Documents in the Small-to-Medium Business (Part 1)
In the overly saturated market of electronic content and document management there is a deep divide developing between the enterprise-class content management systems (CMS) and the small and medium business document management systems (DMS). What is interesting to me is there are some programmatic differences between the applications, but the key differences tend to come in with the levels of professional services offerings and general approach or offering to the target account.
Many larger CMS/DMS vendors, like EMC, see the SMB marketplace as a ripe opportunity since their upper end client-base has been saturated. I am not completely convinced they understand the SMB marketplace as it requires strong channel partners or seriously commercializing the offering, thus reducing the lucrative professional services divisions’ opportunities. The smaller players have some interesting offerings, but with all of the chatter in the space, it is difficult for potential customers to determine the best offering for their business without simply jumping in the proverbial water. Therefore, what do they do, they turn to trusted technology partners in their area for advice.
This prompted many software companies into looking at channels instead of investing in a direct sales force - or at least, augmenting direct sales forces. This is a stable model and has some unique advantages, like allowing for localized service - which SMB customers identify with quite well. However, there is often a wide variation in the level of expertise at each channel partner, so SMB owners would be well served to dig in and understand the bench strength of the local provider as well as what certification programs the software vendors require.
Another disadvantage of a channel-sales model is simply a cost factor. With each hand through which the inventory passes, the costs rise to the end-customer. Add to this any installation, training, maintenance, and customization fees and the price tag for an SMB can quickly rise to a dollar figure that could make an owner’s head spin. But, what an owner must way is whether the expertise of the local provider and on-going support offset a slightly higher cost, many times the answer is, “Yes.”
Learn the tricks to control costs in a DMS project and the benefits and risks of Software as a Service (SaaS), in Part 2 of this story…
Are You Focused on What Your Customers Need, or What They Want?
My birthday is coming up this week, and my loving and caring wife actually decided to purchase me a real want, an Apple Touch! This little device wasn’t cheap in my opinion, and was definitely classified as a want - NOT a need… Now, many of you have been exposed to either the iPhone or Touch (and certainly have your opinions), but it really got me thinking about gauging success in terms of whether you meet the needs requirement document - or whether you step past that and also meet the wants that often get dropped off the list.
I have loved my various iPods over the years, and credit Apple (much like all pundits) with a truly creative and unique offering to the market - a game changing, paradigm shift in the market. When they released the iPhone, not only did they do a superior marketing job (as Apple almost always does), but launched a truly revolutionary OS platform that finally does bring an intuitive interface with most of the things I want and need in an electronic device.
Many of you probably suffer from the same blurring of home and work life that I do (according to many surveys), and a device that allows me to keep “my life” together (both personal and professional) is truly wonderful. I mean I’ve been using smart devices for years, both Palm and Windows Mobile - and recently RIM BlackBerry. All seem to lack something, but I can now see that the only thing Apple is really lacking for a blockbuster smartdevice is simply more integrations - a trend that has been ramping up for some time with EDI, etc. - but it has really taken off with the advent of what most people commonly refer to as Web 2.0…
According to a February 2008 article on TechCrunch, the iPhone is second only to RIM in the US smartphone market.
Figures released from research firm Canalys
show that Apple’s iPhone in now second only to RIM (Blackberry) in the US smartphone market.
In the 4th quarter of 2007, the iPhone surged to a 28% share of the US converged device market behind RIM’s 41%, but ahead of 3rd third placed Palm on 9%. The iPhone was ahead of all Windows Mobile device vendors combined with a market share of 21%.
Despite its still limited official availability, Apple moved into 3rd place globally, behind Nokia (52.9%) and RIM (11.4%). Apple’s 6.5% global smart phone market share put it 19,000 units ahead of the struggling Motorola.
So, it’s an interesting case study in the simple fact that when you really meet the needs AND wants of your customers (end-users for all you IT pogues out there), it becomes a game changer… it’s ultimately the greatest metric for true success, as indicated by these staggering numbers. Now, all Apple has to do is stave off the on-slaught of me-to companies that is bound to come (according to their Q1-08 10T). That just goes to show you success won’t allow you to stand still, you always have to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace.
Well, I’m off to enjoy my new Touch… It really was the one of the best gifts I have received in a long time…
I’m moving in…
To any and all that stop by, I’m moving my blog. I have http://www.changeforge.com redirected, but don’t have a lot of the themes and plug-ins configured just yet… so I’ll be working on that over the next few days…
See you on the flip side,
Ken
Is Your Culture a Culture of Team?
I have been in the technology industry for around 11 years now, beginning in the United States Marine Corps. This was one of the most trying times of my young life, both personally, with a newly wed wife living 3000 miles away from home for the first time, and professionally - and a challenge was what I signed up for. One of the sayings of the Corps was, “Shared adversity builds team.” Boy, did the Marine Corps take advantage of this, and I will tell you that I worked with some of the best and brightest people I have ever had the privilege to serve with.
One of my regrets is that I was not mature enough at the time to appreciate what the value of a team offered as opposed to standing on your own against the odds. Sure, I got the idea of a fire team or squad, but I never truly understood what the Staff Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO’s) would always say, “The Marine Corps doesn’t take care of Marines, Marines take care of other Marines.” It is something that I am only starting to truly understand how profound a statement that was. I truly worked with one of the best teams known on this planet.
To say that, is to say that when I joined my current company almost 5 years ago, I have come to understand there are so many layers to building a true team. Through finishing a degree and attending various management seminars to building my own team, perhaps the most fundamental thing I have come to know is that people help other people; it takes the right people supporting each other in pursuit of a common vision that truly takes a team from good into the realm of greatness.
I am a big fan of Jim Collins book Good to Great. One of my favor parts is where he talks about getting the right people on the bus, in the right seats on the bus, and getting the wrong people off. We started along a path of building a great company many years ago, and it started with the founder, lived on with the new owners, and has not only been seeded in each of us at this company but has really taken root. It is not a fanciful wish or a begging question, but a resolute and humble knowledge that the passion of doing the very best job for those individuals that stand beside you makes you great!
While this post may sound a little cultish, almost as if I had ‘drank the Kool-Aid’, the team that I have had the privilege of working with and even building has turned out to be a greater honor than accolade. I have been humbled by the many trials I have been through and think of this current position as infinitely more complex and challenging than ever was the Marine Corps, but exceedingly more rewarding. It is the people that I hold up that in turn support me so that we may work towards a shared vision… and I have learned a valuable lesson that we stand stronger together than alone - a lesson both business and society-at-large can learn from.
Regards,
Ken
Does Software Solve Real Business Problems?
SFA, CRM, ERP, ERM, DMS, CMS, MPS, and SaaS… Wow, we hear these acronyms and probably use some versions of them in our daily business - and even to run our business. So what’s in a name?
Well, evidently a lot according to “them”, the software manufactures and industry experts alike. We hear all about the wonderful productivity enhancements and time saving tools there are, and don’t get me wrong… “they” may be on to something there. It’s a wonderful commercial the salesperson puts on for us, and we blindly subscribe to the fantasy while skipping lightly through strawberry fields.
Oblivious to the pending chasm we are hurtling towards, a reality of costly acquisition and lengthy integrations eagerly awaits the unwary. This grim picture painted, what really boggles my mind is how often companies do not have the stomach to keep down the ugly truth that you must understand where you stand before you can decide where you must step.
What does that even mean? What I see time and again is that companies fail to comprehend software alone cannot solve their problems, only focus and attention to aligning business goals and metrics to actionable and corrective plans. Software is much like a coat of paint. If you have spent time sanding and priming and buffing then a good paint job can bring new life to something; however, if you simply slop new paint over old to cover some rust spots the paint job will always look splotchy and eventually the rust spots will resurface.
My advice is to spend what is the hardest, but arguably the most rewarding, time in understanding why you run the business the way you do. Create metrics to help measure your business, like a report card, but do not let the metrics dictate success alone, as they are simply an indication of what is working and what is not. If the metrics indicate something is working, ask, “Why?” If the metrics indicate something is not working, ask, “Why not?” Perhaps, the most important advice I might offer is that change is inevitable and on going.
Remember, there is no magic bullet, but I’m sure you can find a silver lining if you know where to look.
Regards,
Ken
… Or Get Off the Pot!
In the interest of being honest, I am not a truly patient person in many situations. While I can display patience, my behavioral energy can be depleted and I tend to get a little frustrated. My deep desire to understand something from all angles often is my salvation and reprieve. What I truly get frustrated with is when people have the facts and can’t make a decision… by George, get off the pot!
This brings us to the point of this post, the very thing I must learn, change is not necessarily fast. In fact, quite often it takes much longer than I would care for. I don’t know if this is really anything exceptionally profound here folks… but in order for change to occur, people must be involved and willing to change. Sure we can pin someone into a corner and force an reaction (notice I did not say action), or we may have some power over a person (positionally or informationally), and require a person perform a certain task. However, these things, to me, are not to be confused with change.
Change requires individuals to sympathize and understand the value of adopting a different path, and a willingness to put the energy forth to walk that different path. Some changes are quick and painless - and even welcome. However, substantial change can be difficult, and I’m sure if you have ever tried to diet or adopt a new work-out routine you will agree.
So I say all of this to simply say that to change can be tough. Couple this with being a pioneer - ready to blaze that next trail, and you could be in for a world of frustration if you do not mentally prepare yourself for cultural, political, financial, and logistical challenges to arise throughout the adoption process; Additionally, change does not ever seem to happen overnight; change often occurs over years and decades with constant care and feeding to always adapt the change process in alignment with the strategic goals.
Regards,
Ken
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ChangeForge... a catalyst to affect the paradigm by Ken Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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