Cloud

In a MuleSoft survey of 651 IT decision-makers from enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, respondents said integration was a major barrier to digital transformation.

And organizations have a lot to integrate; on average, companies with more than 1,000 employees use more than 1,000 individual applications in all of their businesses.

Integration between systems, the pitfall of digital transformation

A common way for businesses to connect applications to each other is to custom code their applications and APIs, often referred to as point-to-point integration.

However, for a company with more than 1,000 applications, this level of tight coupling can create problems when changes, evolutions, or updates occur.

IT decision-makers say that on average, only 29 percent of their business applications are currently integrated or connected.

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Digital disruptions continue to weigh heavily on businesses of all sizes and in all sectors, as consumers, customers, employees and partners now expect everything to be accessible on demand, at all times; in short, everything needs to be fully connected.

If your business is already in tune with the digital age, great!

Otherwise, “it’s time to wake up” because we are no longer in the era “the biggest eats the smallest” but rather “the fastest eats the slowest”.

In this second post, which relates the MuleSoft (Connectivity Report) survey of 650 IT decision-makers from companies, more than 1,000 employees, from the US, Australia, Germany, England, Netherlands, Singapore and China, we will focus on the challenges faced by IT decision-makers in their digital transformation project.

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The goals that a company approaches the Cloud with may vary of one thousand one manners, such as its effect on Agility, UX, Cost, Scalability, and Reliability; and they will determine how it will implement its Cloud process and now, strongly suggest implementing a service-oriented Application Development.

The very first decision you should make is whether or not, you’ll go for a Private Cloud or a Public Cloud. More precisely, here is an overview of both characteristics to take into account for your applications and services configuration.
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Although it’s been one of the most talked-about buzzword of the last few years, surprisingly, there are still a lot of misconceptions regarding the benefits of moving to, being on and operating on the Cloud. Nevertheless, there are still many good reasons to go on the Cloud for Startups and SMBs. So maybe it’s time to take a second good look at it and give it a second thought… if you haven’t yet.

The basic premises remain the same:

• forget about hardware, we’ll provide it
• forget about licensing, we’ll provide it
• you only pay for what you use

So why not give the Cloud a first shot or, some may say, to give your company a second chance!

6 good reasons to go on the Cloud for Startups and SMBs

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This is Big Data era right? And everyboy is just so happy with all this new Intelligence pouring in and all these KPIs literally falling from the skies which will all of a sudden enlighten us and magically empower us with infallible decisions and grant us assured success, right?

And we’re all writing down new figures of « big-data augmented » sales and revenues and God knows just how fantastic everything will be from now on for us all!

Well, the thing is I don’t want to kill it for you all but really, don’t you feel that as CXO we’re all already pretty much flooded with data, information et metrics of all sorts?

Two considerations I’d like to submit to you.

Question of Intelligence, what KPIs and not even Big Data will ever tell you!

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Choosing an ERP is always a difficult decision that has significant economic consequences. It needs research and proper evaluation because it influences your organization in many different ways. Long term commitment to a software and its vendor comes after this step. Implementation process lasts for such a long time and it takes huge amount of resources. Therefor you and your consultants need a clear understanding of your requirements and characteristics for a product. Here is a list of equally important though less considered items for evaluating and choosing an ERP product. (more…)

Here’s an overview of the impacts to come and the vision behind Windows 10 Application Development for enterprise.

The multiplatform vision behind Windows 10 is called, Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and it will have a great impact on Microsoft tools and software users but even more so, for Microsoft application developers.

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Everybody talks about BI (Business Intelligence) and its virtues since a few years; everybody wants BI seeing in it a miracle remedy to its enterprise or Sales Force performance or thinking it could be the new growth vector they’re looking for. And probably with good reason but it can’t be done with a blink of an eye, there has to be a sound analysis done before mobilizing Business Intelligence!

Challenges of Business Intelligence

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You are a mobile worker and you have just got yourself the brand new iPad2 and it’s killing you… you just feel like not bringing your laptop on your next business trip or client meeting.  Now, is this a good idea?

Only 4-5 years back; I would have answered this: tell me about your IT systems and I’ll tell you how things will turn out because at the time, most mobile workers were greatly depending on the « back-end office » to do business; and then came the BlackBerry which enabled real-time business and conversation with the Clientele and afterwards, new Smartphone devices with stock and calculus and synchronization and display capabilities have made us all almost fully autonomous in terms of Mobility, but let’s be honest, it’s still not a laptop!

So what’s new with Tablets, really?  Well, many things but maybe first and foremost they are the best mid-term between working / display surface and easiness of transportation!!!  I don’t want to provide free advertising but the new iPad 2 is only 8,8 mm thick for a weight of 601 g, it can hold into your hands but with a display screen far more superior than that of a Smartphone.

And with a touch-screen tablet, iOS and Android that is (and a few others…), everything becomes so instinctive: launching an application, surfing the Web, consulting your emails, watching a movie or reading a book; it’s almost child play. Having doubts, take a look at this picture!!!

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Many clients from medium and large enterprises that we meet have migrated their CRM in the Cloud or are seriously thinking about it. On the other, and as surprising as it may look, we have also met others who have set a Cloud CRM and are on the verge… of coming down from their cloud!!!  In fact, just recently, while attending the CFO Summit in the USA, we were quite surprised to find out that many enterprises were not that satisfied with a well-known Cloud CRM solution and are seriously looking to a tailor-made CRM solution!

This is the story for this post; why should you migrate to a Cloud CRM and why should you look into a more traditional, some would say a more, personalized solution?

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Two articles on enterprise applications coming from the same publisher, businessmobile.fr, caught our attention recently. They’re interesting because they appeared less than a week apart and were in fact contradictory:

Mobility for business: complex business applications are slow to gain acceptance

In the first article based on a Forrester study, it says “the use of specific business applications is still limited and trails far behind the adoption of email or calendaring functions.”…

Hum…

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