McKinsey's SaaS Report, Cisco Employee Security Study, New MetraTech Execs, Celigo and Salesforce.com

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

McKinsey's SaaS Report, Cisco Employee Security Study, New MetraTech Execs, Celigo and Salesforce.com

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Joe Pass's Virtuoso. Pass is generally considered, by folks who know such things, to be along with Wes Montgomery one of the best jazz guitarists ever. It's strange:  First Coffee likes jazz music and likes guitar music -- attempts to play guitar, even -- but doesn't care much for guitar jazz.

 

Maybe this'll change my mind, as I've never heard this album, but just as the violin is the lyrical instrument of choice for the classical style, and the banjo, fiddle and mandolin are for bluegrass and the piano is for honky-tonk, it seems to First Coffee that brass and reeds -- particularly the clarinet, trumpet and saxophone -- are the lyrical instruments most suited to jazz and that guitar is most suited to folk, blues and rock. Certainly guitars play classical pieces and trumpets play the blues, but not naturally so:

 

Arecent survey of more than 850 enterprise software customers by McKinsey and Sandhill "confirms the company's projections that SaaS adoption is on the rise."

 

The report indicates "good news for the industry, despite the current softness in the U.S. economy. Because the majority of the activity in the software sector occurs in North America, having customers on the lookout for innovative offerings provides some assurance that, despite industry consolidation, there's growth potential ahead."

 

According to the McKinsey and Sandhill report, "another bright spot for the industry is the accelerated adoption of subscription and on-demand purchasing models by enterprises over the past year." Evidently last year's survey showed that companies expected to spend 21 percent of their software budgets by 2009 on these pricing models, which translates to $71 billion.

 

According to recent Forrester surveys, global software spending rose from $313 billion in 2007 to $341 billion for 2008. The McKinsey and Sandhill Survey calls this "good news for SaaS vendors who by the nature of their products sell either by subscription or on demand."

 

The marquee name in the Software-as-a-Service CRM market, Salesforce.com, has posted $920 million in revenue already this year.

 

"With the majority of our product development completed, the company will focus the majority of its time and efforts on targeted sales initiatives for our 3 core products," says Frank Connor, CEO of SaaS vendor F3 Technologies, which sells CRM, project management, human resources and accounting products.

 

Since "there are some large enterprises converting to the models that underpin SaaS offerings, there is a clear opportunity for those that can offer the right product in combination with the right selling strategy" according to the McKinsey and Sandhill report.

...
 

Cisco has released a second set of findings from a global study on data leakage, finding the prevalence and effectiveness of corporate security policies within companies and the reasons employees break or comply with them.

 

The study is designed to let information technology teams in various parts of the world "understand employee risk factors so they can effectively tailor policies that fit the reality of what their users need to do their jobs," according to the Ciscans.

 

The latest security findings follow Cisco's previous research announced last month on common employee data leakage risks and mistakes around the world. The findings on corporate security policies stem from surveys of more than 2,000 employees and IT professionals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, India, Australia and Brazil conducted by InsightExpress, a U.S.-based market research firm.

 

"As lines blur between work and home, and as employees use collaborative applications and mobile devices, the role that security policies play in protecting sensitive data becomes increasingly critical," Cisco officials say.

 

The study found the majority of employees believe their companies' policies are unfair. This is the case in eight of 10 countries, excepting Germany and the United States.

 

John N. Stewart, chief security officer for Cisco, said when employees believe that security policy is unfair, in the way of them doing their jobs and don't grasp the "why," then policies "quickly lose their efficacy. Too often we write policies as rules, not as reasons... by engaging with employees and understanding what they need to do their jobs, we can develop realistic policies."

 

The research found that 77 percent of businesses "have security policies in place." The absence of security policies is most prevalent in Japan (39 percent) and the United Kingdom (29 percent).

 

But even when companies have security policies, the research reveals that employees often defy or ignore them: "More than half of the employees surveyed admitted that they do not always adhere to corporate security polices. Of all the countries, France (84 percent) has the most employees who admitted defying policies, whether rarely or routinely," the study found. In India, 11 percent admitted "never" or "hardly ever" abiding by corporate security policies.

 

Depending on the country, the number of IT professionals who knew a policy existed was 20 to 30 percent higher than the number of employees, the study found, with the largest gaps (31 percent) in the United States, Brazil and Italy. Eleven percent of employees said IT "never communicates or educates" them on security policies, with the United Kingdom (25 percent) and France (20 percent) having the greatest number of employees making this claim.

 

According to IT, employees defy policies for a variety of reasons, from failing to grasp the magnitude of security risks to apathy. However, employees said the top reason for non-compliance is their belief that policies do not align with what they need to do their jobs.

...
 

MetraTech, a charging, billing, settlement and customer care product provider, has added to its leadership team two executives, characterized by company officials as "a response to the recent wins in the communications, transportation, and SaaS markets, the new regional headquarters in Asia Pacific and Latin America, and the increase in employee count."

Joining MetraTech as Vice President, Professional Services is Chevy Vithiananthan. Vithiananthan is responsible for the company's Professional Services Group globally. He has a background working with both start-ups and large multi-national firms in North America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, including telecom, e-commerce, and digital media providers.

 

Vithiananthan's professional expertise "spans high-volume systems design, implementation, integration, test, production operations, and ongoing maintenance," MetraTech officials say, adding that most recently, "Chevy managed a 100+ person professional service and application delivery team across the Americas for Comverse Technologies. His past clients have included eBay, British Telecom, France Telecom, Optus Communications."

 

Joining as Vice President, Human Resources is Bob Clancy. Clancy is responsible for the company's HR initiatives on a worldwide basis.

 

Previously Clancy was Vice President of Human Resources for MRO Software, now part of the Tivoli division with IBM. While at MRO, he supported the worldwide growth of the company from 150 to 925 employees.

 

MetraTech offers a variety of delivery options ranging from licensing to outsourcing. Headquartered in Boston, MetraTech has offices in San Francisco, Frankfurt, Paris, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro and London. MetraTech is a venture-backed, privately held company.

...
 

Celigo has announced the availability of the Celigo NetSuite Connector for Salesforce CRM on the Force.com AppExchange.

 

The Connector provides integration between the Salesforce CRM application suite and NetSuite -- an accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) product that supports back-office operations.

 

Celigo's NetSuite Connector for Salesforce CRM is immediately available for deployment on the Force.com AppExchange. The announcement was made at Dreamforce '08, Salesforce.com's user and developer conference.

 

Celigo's NetSuite Connector for Salesforce CRM provides a "Lead to Cash" process by enabling users to create estimates or sales orders in NetSuite from Salesforce CRM in real time, with the press of a button. It also lets the sales force manage customer relationships with capabilities beyond the scope of traditional customer relationship management (CRM) by making NetSuite back-office financial data, including order management, fulfillment, and accounting, available within Salesforce CRM.

 The Connector also synchronizes account information, as well as product and pricing data, between the two applications in real time.
Jan Arendtsz, CEO of Celigo, said the NetSuite Connector for Salesforce CRM "is a complete product, offered as an integration-as-a-service, not just an integration tool or platform... designed and architected from the ground up. This approach differs significantly from that of a traditional integration software vendor, who has limited domain knowledge of the applications being integrated, and whose objective is to sell an integration tool, not a complete product."
 


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