
The Changing Software Partner Ecosystem
Resellers of SMB ERP products and other application software partners are experiencing a changing solutions world. Presenters at the Progress Software Global Partner Conference gave some great insights into these changes.

Panaya – A different kind of ERP third party maintenance provider
ERP update costs got your firm stuck on old releases? Panaya may have cloud-based way to help your firm stay current in a less costly and less risky manner.

Accenture: ‘Branded’ by the Tiger Woods mess
Accenture’s connection to Tiger Woods may be moving from the Asset to the Liability column. Should firms tie so much of their branding in with a celebrity?

Dreamforce post#2: Chatter, Events, REA and the Future of Management
Don’t think of Salesforce’s Chatter as bunch of social networking techologies for business people to use. If you do, you’ve missed the real potential for businesses to operate in real-time.

A Tale of Two Software Worlds: Old ERP vs. SaaS
Dreamforce’s attendance really puts a strong data point on how attractive SaaS is becoming. Other vendors this week have provided additional data points that point to a troubling time ahead for laggard ERP vendors.

Cloud-to-Cloud Integration – Another Big ERP Challenge!
NetSuite’s new Open Connect integration should make ERP buyers and vendors re-think interfaces and integration across application suites. Everyone needs to re-think what cloud-to-cloud integration, in multi-tenant apps, really means.

Sustainability: Hard for business, harder for ERP vendors
ERP vendors don’t get sustainability. They think it’s about collecting all of a user’s electric and gas bills to determine their carbon footprint. They think it’s a reporting exercise. If they can develop a spreadsheet with more rows and columns than the next ERP vendor, then they have achieved some sort of market leading, product excellence crown of achievement.
The troubling thoughts re: outsourcing
Watch this space for future problems!
There’s a lot going on in the outsourcing world lately. Things like:
– Perot Data Systems being acquired by Dell
– ACS getting bought by Xerox
Add to these deals, consider that:
– Accenture is providing guidance suggesting zero growth
– Accenture cutting back its executive ranks
– A colleague telling me that outsourcing, traditional & […]
Dell and Perot: What this means
Look at more than the upside to any acquisition
Dell and Perot are getting married. This acquisition puts approximately 23,000 Perot services employees in with Dell. (see Larry Dignan’s detailed post on the transaction ) (here’s an InfoWorld post, too)
From the macro view, here are my observations:
1) This deal is the latest where a hardware vendor […]