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The Enterprise Irregulars will be @ Defrag (Nov. 17-18 outside of Denver) this year, presenting a track on platform shifts.   We have five, yup five free passes to Defrag to give away.  But to get a free pass, ya gotta ask us a question.  The five people who pose the most interesting, most thought- provoking questions (as judged by yours truly) will receive a Defrag pass. The questions should obviously be about the Enterprise Software space and those that ask questions regarding platform shifts will receive special attention.

So what do you have to lose?  Certainly not brain cells.  Just post your questions in the comment section and we'll take it from there. 

Can Marketo Give Marketers Some Cred?

Some of the EI's took a briefing today from Jon Miller, Co-founder and VP of Marketing for Marketo.  Jon briefed us on their new product - Revenue Cycle Explorer, which purports to be able to accurately analyze ROMI - your Return on Marketing Investment.  Jon says CMO's are asking him and the Marketo team to help them be credible to their colleagues.  Credible by being seen as an intricate part of the revenue acquisition team - not just the arts and crafts guy.

It really is just what marketers need.   They do need a tool which will enable them to gauge the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns in real dollars and can be used to hold the CMO accountable for a revenue oriented target in the same way that a head of sales would be.

What it does

The solution provides analytics around what the conversion rates are in each stage of the demand funnel. It also enables organization to customize business rules around their particular demand funnel, for instance, what happens if sales rejects a Marketing Qualified Lead, or when should a prospect be placed in  Nurturing bucket.

I asked Jon if they were taking the application in the direction of Predictive Analytics so that Marketers can forecast revenue in the same way that sales leads already do.  Sure enough we were shown mock-ups of yet to be released (or developed?)  predictive analytics packages.  Further with the analytics already provided Marketo enables customers to create predictive models of conversion and transitions from stage to stage. 

The Hurdle

I think Marketo's biggest problem isn't Eloqua, their main competitor, nor is it bringing their products to market. I think its the state of enterprise data.  Many marketing organizations do not have clean data marts that they can leverage to perform this type of analysis. Nor can they even agree on the stages of their demand funnel.  Many times its a mess and until and unless you have a unified strategy and platform for managing marketing data, it ain't gonna work without a lot of effort.

I do agree though that Marketing leads are looking for more credibility with their executive colleagues.  Too many times marketers have been relegated to the arts and crafts aspects of marketing simply because they didn't have a quantitative platform from which to measure the marketing organization's effectivness.  If I were a CMO right now, I'd be considering a marketing analytics platform such as what Marketo showed me today. Good stuff!

From The Personal File: Robyn Myler To Lead Aspen Film

Robyn, my significantly better half, has taken over as the new Executive Director of Aspen Film.    You  can read about it in the Aspen Times.  Robyn will have day to day responsibility for short and long term strategy, day to day operations, its artistic and fund raising efforts and she will also supervise Aspen Film's communications and outreach efforts.

She is an attorney by training but has great leadership and organizational skills.  Aspen Film needs someone who can lay a solid foundation which will ensure the long-term growth and health of the organiztion.  You can learn more about Aspen Film here.  I can't think of a better person for the job.  I am looking forward to watching her soar!  Congratulations RJ!

The Irregulars Are Coming! Enterprise Irregulars @Defrag

Many of you know us.  We're a rough confederation of bloggers, influencers, analysts, software executives, independent consultants, engineers, marketers, chief cook and bottle washers and the like who  are passionate about the Enterprise Software space. Its not the only thing we blog on but it takes up most of our time.  

Internally, we've been discussing what we   can do as a group to engage directly with our readers and reach an audience that may not read us regularly.   We converged around the notion of a conference.

We discussed the merits of holding our own conference vs. joining an existing event and we felt it would be best if we began these types of efforts by partnering with someone we know and admire.   We are big fans of Eric Norlin and Defrag so have decided to partner with him for our first ever EI conference track.

What will we be speaking on?

Well, Jeff Nolan suggested a number of items to the group, and the theme that seems to be taking up so much of people's energy these days are Platform Shifts... from on premise to on demand, to the cloud, social platform shifts, do platform shifts even matter at the end of the day, and what about innovation?  Do platform shifts help or hinder innovation? 

Also, two of our own are keynoting:  Vinnie Merchandani, author of The New Polymath and Maggie Fox, CEO of The Social Media Group.

To that end we will be discussing all of this and more at Defrag, November 17th and 18th. Defrag is held just outside of Boulder, which is beautiful in November!  So come register and join us!  Come talk with us about Platform Shifts and much more.

We look forward to it!

AbleAdvisory: CA Technologies Buys Hyperperformix

TechcrunchIT posted on CA buying Hyperformix, a provider of capacity management software for dynamic physical, virtual, and cloud IT infrastructures.

Capacity management enables customers to discover how physical, virtual, hardware, software, storage, and network resources are being used, and to determine what resources will be needed in the future. The technology also helps customers optimize the deployment of those resources to meet business objectives.

CA says the acquisition of Hyperformix will help it enhance its own virtualization management solutions. According to our own CrunchBase, Hyperformix raised close to $12 million.

Léo Apotheker's Ascension

Well there was a lot of jaw droppin  over the announcement that Léo Apotheker is HP's new CEO and that Ray Lane is joining the Board.  Here's all the analysis worth reading. It's just that, well, hmmmm.  I'm a Léo fan. I am. I admit it. And I think he's got some game.   But is this the right team for him?  Lets not jump to any conclusions before the man finds the key to the executive bathroom! But lets get to the color before we get to the analysis shall we?   Reactions in the EI community ran the gamut :

I really don't understand the HP Board of Directors... seriously, is this the best they can do? How much shareholder wealth do they have to destroy before being satisfied?

All I know is if I am a CIO, I love my choices now - buy from Oracle, SAP, ex-SAP, IBM.

This is good for cloud, and up and comers type companies as these guys try to integrate hardware and software to "extract more wallet share" we all can deliver real tangible value and grow without being noticed or fought.

I am baffled.

WOW.  I did NOT see this coming!  What a very strange choice given where HP is and where they might need to go...

stunned

SAHP. You heard it here first.

Pretty negative eh?  Josh Greenbaum takes another tack with his post:

I’ve seen Léo in action, and he may be just want HP needs: someone from outside Silicon Valley culture who understands how to navigate in a global economy, a consummate sales professional, a strategist and thinker, and, above all, someone who gets enterprise software, and the value of looking high up the food chain for opportunity.  Of course, I’m biased, but, that’s why I didn’t chose to become a storage technology analyst 20 years ago.

Phil Ferbst  takes a wait and see attitude and approaches it from an M&A perspective:

With Léo Apotheker taking the helm at HP, all sorts of questions arise as to why they hired a software guy, who wasn’t exactly a wild success when he was top dog at SAP.  Léo is the man you’d want if you are planning to acquire SAP.  He knows the company inside and out and is savvy enough to work out some sort of game plan to integrate the German giant into the HP empire.

Ray Wang is also positive:

Apotheker and Lane bring software vision and leadership. Léo bring global software experience, effective salesmanship, and a highly strategic point of view.  Ray Lane brings Silicon Valley credibility, long term vision, and wisdom sorely needed to the board.  HP needs to make acquisitions in software to take this to the next level.  Time is not on HP’s side.  The core printer and ink business can be vulnerable and must be defended while making the play for enterprise software.

Once you get to know Léo you see a man who is willful, witty, intelligent and deeply engaged.  He's got a socratic/Talmudic thought process that while driving YOU crazy, makes you think, defend your position and serves his decision making process oh so well.  He also listens better than almost any man I have ever met.  And that my friends is an undervalued talent.  I like the fact that he's a consummate salesman, that he brings a depth of enterprise software experience that is lacking at HP. 

My guess is that between the enterprise application play that HP can execute on with Léo at the helm  and their infrastructure software with things such as HP OpenView, Léo can leverage both to be the glue that keeps HP humming. I know a lot of you application types forget about plumbing. But every house needs it and HP's got it. Its good plumbing too. It gives both IBM Tivoli and CA's Infrastructure management solutions a run for their money.   How he combines both application and infrastructure management into a unified software solution (talk about an uber suite) and how Léo can manage the hardware and consumer spaces will be an interesting challenge for him.  The other challenge will be developing rapport and trust with the engineering teams at HP.  An area where I believe Léo got some serious schooling while at SAP.

Lets wait and see before judge shall we?

 

Failure Fridays

Someone very close to me is about to begin a very cool new gig. Its a role that most would love and in fact be envious of (I sure am - and will be blogging about it soon!).  So this is for her and anyone else who wants to optimize their path to success.

Look, I preach failure.  I do.  I believe that one has to fail their way to success, in fact its the only sure fire way to achieve it -- by learning from your failures.   There is no innovation without failure. Failure is not something you avoid!  Its something to embrace. 

I like encouraging my clients to hold Failure Friday get togethers... grab a pizza, some beer and wine - invite the team to join you and invite other teams at your organization to participate.  Go thru the week's successes and failures... spend 10 minutes on the successes, then delve into the failures.  Figure out as a team why it didn't work, and what you can learn from it.  How would you do it differently?  Having outside teams there are critical because they can give you a non-rose colored glasses perspective...they can look at your failures and give you truly objective insight into how to do it differently.

And most importantly, you have to make these celebrations of failure.   If you find you and your team headed to beating yourself up over them, then you're headed in the completely wrong direction.

Mitch Ditkoff who blogs on innovation, has collected some useful quotes on the value of failure.... share them with your teams.

• “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.” — Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM
• “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” — Miles Davis
• “99 percent of success is built on failure.” — Charles Kettering
• “I have not failed once. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” — Thomas Edison
• “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” — Charles Kettering
• “Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
• “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F. Kennedy
• “Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.” — Horace
• “When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to laugh at ourselves.” — Katherine Mansfield
• “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” — Henry Ford
• “No matter how well you perform, there’s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it’s lousy.” — Sir Laurence Olivier
• “If your life is free of failures, you’re not taking enough risks.” — H. Jackson Brown
• “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” — Beverly Sills
• “I failed my way to success.” — Thomas Edison
• “Act as if it were impossible to fail.” — Dorothea Brande
• “Failure is success if we learn from it.” — Malcolm Forbes
• “You can only be as good as you dare to be bad.” — John Barrymore
• “The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.” — Paramahansa Yogananda
• “Failure doesn’t mean that you’re a failure … it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” — Robert Schuller
• “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
• “Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.” — Napoleon Hill
• “You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.”– Mary Pickford
• “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” — Winston Churchill
• “We are not retreating — we are advancing in another direction.” — Douglas MacArthur
• “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” — Thomas A. Edison
• “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” — Japanese Proverb
• “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius
• “Stumbling is not falling.” — Portuguese Proverb

SUSE Linux Optimization for SAP Apps... Now?

There was a little blurb on internet.com a couple of days ago mentioning that Novell would be optimizing the SUSE Linux OS for SAP applications.

Linux vendor Novell is releasing an optimized version of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server tailored for applications from software vendor SAP.

Now I don't expect Novell's business to stand still right now, but this is interesting given that there were reports a couple of weeks back that that Novell was about to break itself into 2 parts and sell itself off. From the NY Post believe it or not:

Novell Inc. has reached a deal in principle to sell itself in two parts, and is three to four weeks away from signing a deal, according to people close to the process.

A strategic buyer will buy the piece of the software provider that develops and delivers Linux SUSE systems, with a private-equity firm picking up much of the rest. Both deals are expected to close simultaneously and the company will be de-listed, according to one source, who noted that the talks are in a sensitive stage and could fall apart.

This feels right considering that Elliott Associates, a Waltham, Mass-based Hedge Fund, made an offer to buy Novell back in March.  The offer was rejected. An optimized Linux enterprise server for SAP applications will benefit the new SUSE Linux owner, whoever that may be.  I will be sad to see an independent Novell go the way of so many other enterprise software vendors... how Darwinian eh?

An Apple [Fill in the blank]. The New Black?

So.... this morning I got up to make some coffee but realized I forgot to buy some yesterday, No problem. I'll  just walk up the street to my local Starbucks.   Its just past the morning rush so its relatively tame in there.   As I'm waiting for my Triple Grande Non-Fat Cappucino I peruse the store. And everywhere, and I mean everywhere,  at every table, seat, line... doesn't matter, folks have an Apple device of some sort.    I counted 3 ipads, 4 iPods, 8 iphones and about half a dozen Macs. It was an impressive sight.  Amazing in fact to see the Apple Brand as a living vibrant entity.   All the more impressive for what was not in the store.  A Windows-based PC or smartphone.  Oh and of course there are the iTunes song give aways at the cash register. 

The brand has clearly taken on a life of its own and here in New York and I suspect in most other places, owning an Apple branded device is the new black.  Its a status symbol that says... "hey, I'm cool, just look at this cool Apple [fill in the blank] that I have."  Note that I am not immune to this either - having  just come back to the gym and listening to my ipod touch and writing this post on my MacBook Pro.  I also think its a bit of a revolt.  A revolt against being locked in to Windows devices, having to do things the Microsoft way.   I wonder if that's going to happen to Apple?

The bar is now set particularly high for the organization. And as Jimmy Cliff says, The Harder They Come, The Harder They Fall.

German User Groups Stepping Up The Pressure On SAP

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung notes that after the quarrelsome and strained relationship with former CEO Léo Apotheker, starting with but certainly not ending over proposed maintenance hikes, the SAP German User Group - DSAG is experiencing a better relationship with the SAP's new co-CEO, Jim Snabe. 

What I gleaned from the article is that  DSAG is moving from "critical distance" to "critical closeness" with SAP.  At least that's what  DSAG chairman Karl Liebstückel said.

It also looks like SAP customers are demanding that that they be more involved in product development and pricing decisions.  I gotta tell ya. I love this simply because, the company has been preaching co-innovation with customers and the market for years now. In fact that was one of the founding reasons to create the SAP Community Network. Now customers are coming back to SAP and saying "ok, put your money where your mouth is (literally!) and co-innovate with us."

So for customers to be demanding this "critical closeness" it says to me that the customer relationship (as viewed by the customer) is not as close as SAP thinks.  Only time will tell.