Business & Technology Nexus

Worth a read. Definitely brings open source marketing to a new level, complete with the “Qtopia” label and the fact that they chose green as its color. It will be very interesting to see how this offering fares once it ships in September.

A few days back Procuri’s Tim Minahan yielded his SupplyExcellence mic to SciQuest’s Suzanne Miglucci to post on the benefits of globalizing your eProcurement implementation.

This is a worthwhile topic and a good read. As I have written in the past, SciQuest is a very good firm that’s proven easy to do business with, especially in the higher education and research markets. Congratulations guys & keep up the good work!

I do want to highlight some differences of opinion on the post, mostly due to my extensive experience advising and watching the Fortune 100 with their global eProcurement implementations. While at Oracle, my biggest eProcurement customer was GE – they ran a global single instance of Oracle iProcurement that spanned 80,000 users, 17 countries, and 7 languages. And their processes surrounding system rollout were just as impressive as the 16B in spend they pumped through annually.

First, ignore Suzanne’s advice when it comes to consolidating vendors. This is a silly political battle to fight. Pursue it later once you’ve proven the new globalized processes and established more credibility with regional organizations. And even then it’s probably not going to help you make your quota of savings for the year. Better to yield some automony to the regions or independent business units and use your political capital elsewhere.

Instead, consolidate vendor RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT. This is an easy win, and is usually where the lion’s share of the savings is anyways. For example, don’t have a resource in each business unit “managing” Dell or Corporate Express. Instead, appoint a global lead & use your new-found global visibility into spend to negotiate better rates. Then quickly pass those savings along to the business units you’re serving. Market your success!

Also, think think think about how you intend to run the system once you’ve globalized it. Don’t paint yourself into a corner giving every region veto power over system changes or up-or-down votes on system downtime. Once you have a global system there is NO GOOD TIME to ever upgrade it, NO GOOD TIME to ever back it up, etc. Late Saturday night U.S. Pacific time may become your only window for operational changes, so think it through.

I enjoyed Suzanne’s recommendations to consider localizations, support for multiple currencies, and multiple languages. This is certainly basic & straightforward advice.

Here’s my take – avoid being an engineer when it comes to currency rates. I can’t tell you the number of times customers have gotten all wound up around forward rate hedging in simple indirect buying. It’s overkill. Plus, everyone gets excited about local language support. Just remember, once you’ve rolled out a language you’re cooked. You can’t take it back. I remember nearly all of my former Fortune 100 customers regretting the day they rolled out Castaellan and Mexican Spanish. Don’t do it. Minimize your language choices if at all possible – remember, all your supposed “global content” will need to be accessible from every language you load. And text search engines that are tuned to operate on a single language get VERY CONFUSED when half the words they come across are French and the other half ENGLISH.

Lastly and very importantly, don’t walk the globalization path alone. Seek out friends who have done it before and milk them for all they are worth. There’s a few of us here at Coupa who have just about seen it all, and we welcome questions & would be happy to connect you to those who have done it before.

Good Luck!

Here I was dreaming of a US automotive start-up to provide further evidence that US workers aren’t all to blame for the lack of innovation, progress, and competitiveness from Ford and GM…. But I needn’t have been just dreaming! All the while there was a pretty interesting boutique automotive start-up less than 30 minutes from my house!

Tesla Motors, based on San Carlos, is attempting to introduce the first “performance” electric hybrid. Armed with a “carload” of laptop batteries for power, this machine can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds. V-r-r-r-oooooom!

The San Jose Mercury News reports “That’s nearly as fast as such gas-powered sports cars as the 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano and the 2007 Porsche 911 GT3.”

Price? 100K. Range? 250 miles.

I’ve heard mixed reactions to the vehicle. So I did my own unscientific survey. I polled 8 golf buddies. Those that owned BMWs were intrigued, definitely a good sign. Those with kids said “how about half the laptop batteries, not quite so fast, and drop the price to 40K.”

It will be great to see how Tesla’s story develops. Here’s a link to their blog. Their car looks sweet – take a gander:

Alex runs a blog called Open Source Unleased. A few weeks back Alex reached out to me and asked if I’d like to participate in an e-interview, something he’s done with a few other folks in the open source game. Here it is.

Back in the late 90′s ATT had a broadband internet division. The group was called ATTBI and they serviced Half Moon Bay, California, where I live. They charged $32.95 a month, and service was pretty good.

Comcast acquired ATTBI but that was fine – Comcast honored the original contract with their new customers. I continued getting a reasonable rate for good service.

Then a little over a year ago Comcast made an unauthorized change to my service – adding Cable TV. I called in once the bill arrived and asked for my old service back. So they changed it back. But, voila, the price was suddenly 57.95.

I called to complain & was told I was entitled to 32.95 rate but “our systems won’t allow us to use it.” I was irritated. So, the service agent put me on a 1 year promotional plan at 29.99 to smooth things over. “Fine, I said, and you’ll hear from me in another year.”

This past month the bill increased as expected to 57.95. But this time no amount of arguing got me my old rate back. “We’re sorry sir, we only keep records for 1 year. If you can fax us your original contract with ATTBI we might be able to help, else you are out of luck.” Not one to keep records going back a year let alone 5, I decided I had had enough. I put in a service cancellation request, giving myself enough time to research other options.

I use Vonage (2 lines) instead of traditional phone service, so any switch from Comcast was complicated by that.

But the new DSL packages from AT&T seemed pretty sweet. They start at $13 and go up to around $28. So I began sorting through how to choose high speed internet + phone service as an interesting consumerized version of sourcing for best value.

Just to warn you, my personal crusade to leave Comcast has a “tragic” ending. Sigh. But maybe you can use a similar approach and achieve a better outcome.

On the surface, it looked like I had 3 choices. Stay with Comcast+Vonage, switch to phone+DSL, or go with a local high-speed wireless provider+Vonage.

As an aside I didn’t include TV in my analysis as Dish Network is so much less expensive that under no circumstance is Comcast a good choice from a cost perspective. Sorry Comcast. Quality of local channels from their strange analog feed also makes them an awful choice.

1) Comcast/Cable+Vonage

Comcast high-speed internet is now a whopping $57.95. Add Vonage for your phone service at $24.95.

Monthly Total: $82.90, Yearly Total: $994.80 (HIGHEST COST)

2) AT&T/DSL

AT&T DSL starts at 12.99. For comparable service to the fastest Comcast can ever get (read, when your neighbors aren’t using theirs at the same time as you) is 27.99, although the 17.99 offering of 3Mbps is more than sufficient for home use. Currently, AT&T offers a similar package to Vonage for 39.94 a month.

Monthly Total: $57.93, Yearly Total: $695.16 (Savings: $299.64)

3) Coastside.net+Vonage

Coastside.net blankets much of Half Moon Bay with a wireless connection serving speeds up to 3Mbps. Monthly fee is 39.95 + Vonage home service @ 24.95.

Monthly Total: $64.90, Yearly Total: $778.80 (Savings: $216)

So after finishing this I got on the phone with “the new AT&T” and was excited to switch. After all, they’d been sending marketing spam to my mailbox twice weekly with great offers for a month or two.

“I’m sorry sir, DSL service is not yet available in your neighborhood!”

“Doh!”

My 2nd choice was to go local and use a great Half Moon Bay wireless network provider called Coastside.net. With absolutely fantastic service they came and did a site survey.

“Doh!”

They advised against using the service – their network is just (just!) outside of the range they like to insure highly reliable high speed service.

Which left smug, arrogant Comcast as the only “dealer” of my high-speed internet addiction. Can you spell unregulated monopoly.

I called them back and told them they won (and cancelled my service termination order.)

“Thank you for choosing Comcast!” – complete with laughing in the background along with inaudible murmur sounding like “who’s your daddy now!” :)

Now that’s Comcastic!

I’ve been out there on the Coupa beat talking Open Source and Procurement since our July 27th launch of the Preview Release. It’s been both fun and entertaining.

Several interesting viewpoints (myths?) have come up as blockers to open source adoption that I thought I’d share.

1) Open source won’t ever work for Enterprise Applications, it only works for infrastructure layers.

Please see my prior post on “First We Made Games..” – I find it fascinating how folks can continually resist extrapolation even when a large data set of precedents exists. Games but not operating systems. Operating systems but not web servers. Web servers but not databases. Databases but not Apps. Hmm. I’ve heard that before.

2) Open source infrastructure (operating system, database, web server) is a “a bag of junk” being hoisted on unsuspecting customers against their will, where support costs are astronomical and frustration high.

This one actually made me laugh a little. Obviously the gentleman who made the comment has never looked at Microsoft Windows code (or Oracle Database code for that matter). I think Linus Torvalds once said “all bugs are superficial with enough eyes looking at them” – hence the customer experience I hear is that open source products tend to be more robust and customers more confident in their reliability. Now that’s certainly not always. But the stuff that stays and grows faces a crucible of critical attention that closed source products just never see.

3) For open source to work well there has to be viral adoption – i.e. people need to begin using the system “under the radar” and possibly without their management’s consent.

Now, there’s not enough data to debunk this assertion entirely. The story goes “it works well in CRM because sales teams do whatever they want and then momentum builds and so the head of the business says “ok it’s sugar”. But even Compiere’s numbers tend to suggest a wider appetite for open source solutions in the enterprise.

–

Amid these 3 “blockers” from a loud minority I’ve heard a TON of praise for the movement. Many Procurement & IT folks I’ve heard from are looking to open source to finally bring innovation to a stagnate enterprise applications market. The optimism is exhilirating.

You see, open source success may not always be viral, but it sure is infectious. :)

-Dave

I was surprised and pleased to learn Vance will be announced shortly as Aberdeen’s new leader for its Procurment and Supply Management. He strengthens an already strong team there. Spendmatters broke the news here.

Vance and I worked together for years at Oracle. During the .com boom days Vance was ‘CEO’ of Oracle’s Exchange.Oracle.Com business. He spent many years as leader of Oracle’s Procurement product management organization. More recently, Vance was top gun in a global overlay sales group – a key expert who not only interacted directly with prospects but also advised regional sales forces on trends in the Procurement market.

To date, one of the most impressive things I can say about Vance is that everyone we both know likes, admires, and respects him.

It will be great to see how the new and very much energized team at Aberdeen can do in the Procurement analyst market. Given the inexplicable lack of investment from other research firms, perhaps Aberdeen will take a chokehold on research and become the clear #1.

Good luck Vance!

Using Sourceforge as a proxy for activity in the open source movement, it’s interesting to see where the projects are today. And with over 100,000 active projects on Sourceforge alone, that can take quite a while.

There is a handy “map” (directory) of projects here. The top-level categories are Clustering, Database, Development, Enterprise, Financial, Games, Hardware, Multimedia, Networking, Security, SysAdmin, and VoIP. I tend to watch Database, Enterprise, and Financial categories the most.

Now stats seem to be up everywhere, and certainly Enterprise projects seem no different. Sometimes it’s sustained interested, like with Compiere (take a look at the 5+ year download history here). And sometimes particular projects look to be gaining good interest over time, like with Salesforce.com (take a look at their download history here).

But wait a minute, you say, Salesforce.com isn’t an open source firm. Doesn’t matter. Closed source firms and service providers (Google & Microsoft included) are beginning to open up around the edges and use the movement where it makes sense for them.

And as for-profit open source firms continue to tweak their business models seeking out more revenue (See Matt Asay’s video interview – the “network” is the “new shrinkwrap”), it seems to me there’s the potential for a more head-on collision with closed source than I had previously considered.

What I mean is that the open source advocate’s view is that open source solutions eat away or chip away at their closed competitors, shrinking the overall market size (in $) by bringing down prices and improving TCO, and perhaps offsetting this shrinkage by increasing the overall size of the market. But this traditional view, if I can call it that, assumes closed competitors stand still. What if instead they adapt and provide “me too” open-ness, and essentially engage in the battle in a more headlong fashion.

SugarCRM vs. Salesforce.com will prove a very, very interesting battlefield to watch.

Many of Coupa’s early customer conversations have included Systems Integrators. And SI’s seem to have a really good view on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to Procurement tools (and enterprise software in general).

One fact that comes up again and again is how hard it is to find a tool that handles data security (often called striping), correctly.

Failure seems to center around applications trying to anticipate usage patterns too much. These systems usually start by taking well-worn concepts such as Project, Cost Center, Organization, Legal Entity, etc, and then hard-wire them to control access to different data objects and transactional records.

The problem is the complexity and variability around data security requirements often means none of the well-worn concepts fit perfectly. So an implementer picks the concept that “doesn’t fit least” and shoe horns it into the implementation. Which in turn drives up TCO, confusion, etc. It’s misfits like these that lead to the incredible questions I would sometimes hear from customers (like this one from a Stanford University employee: “Why am I a vendor and why do I have to buy from myself via a Requisition to pay my expense report”).

A better approach is to try to encapsulate data security as an abstraction to ensure a higher degree of flexibility. Doing this and keeping configuration and maintenance to a minimum is tricky – but in my view it’s the right approach to software that fits like a glove.

While life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can all happen without ever leaving your hometown (let alone the country), you have to wonder why getting or renewing a passport is so darn expensive.

My wife and I make it a point to have passports for each of our children – so today was the day our 2-month old daughter’s application was filed. $82! Ouch.

Practically speaking, I guess you can freely leave the US if and only if you can find a spare C-note to get your papers.. Of course, it’s exactly the same situation elsewhere, including in the UK.

Maybe I’ve got this wrong, but freedom of movement should mean “free as in free” not “free as in pay me”. I just don’t see it as a priviledge to be won economically; it’s a freedom and an entitlement all citizens should enjoy. The counter-argument is that because so many Americans do not have or want to have a passport it’s unfair to burden them with the costs. This argument is often applied to bridges, tunnels, and other pay-for-play roadways. Of course, most times there’s another way into or out of town..

I suspect many of you are thinking “come on, $82 isn’t that bad, what’s the big deal” – the question I’d ask you is at what price would you start feeling differently.. $820? $8200?

Of course I forked over the cash and moved on. But imho there’s something “off” about buying a pass to leave the country…