A year ago, I published a series of 10 predictions regarding how the Cloud Computing marketplace would evolve in 2011 in E-Commerce Times. Here’s a recap and assessment of my predictions:

The Cloud Computing market will grow more rapidly than analyst firms forecast as organizations move from asking “what is Cloud and why is it important” to “where and how can I capitalize on the Cloud today.”

I think I did ok on this one, although there remain plenty of organizations who are still trying to define the Cloud and determine why they should seriously consider employing it.

This accelerated growth will occur despite a major cloud computing service disruptions and/or significant security infractions, which will heighten customer concerns but won’t discourage wider adoption.

This certainly was the case as we watched Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) crash, jeopardizing numerous start-ups and other companies dependent on its Cloud … Read More »

For years, a variety of industry analysts and bloggers have suggested that SAP jumpstart its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and broader Cloud initiatives with a major acquisition, such as SuccessFactors. Today’s news that SAP will buy SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion shows that the company’s executives have finally admitted that they can no longer rely on internal development and organic sales efforts to gain a meaningful share of the rapidly growing SaaS/Cloud marketplace.

I can’t say that I’ve been among those advocating this type of bold move because I’ve been a part of a similar acquisition which failed to achieve its strategic objective, and I’m not convinced that SAP will be able to transform its business through this transaction.

Back in 1999, I worked for a fast-growing network professional services company, called International Network Services (INS), which was acquired by Lucent Technologies for $3.7 billion, or 12x revenues! Lucent’s goal … Read More »

The year of the Cloud has come to a climax at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco where over 30,000 registrants converged to celebrate the rapidly expanding world of ‘on-demand’ solutions and collaboration tools.

Salesforce.com used the event to beat back the recent efforts of Oracle and Microsoft to gain a share of the Cloud Computing market with a new round of initiatives aimed at building on its phenomenal momentum and success.

The two most significant announcements on Day One were Salesforce.com’s offer of free Chatter accounts across its customer base along with a public version of the social networking service in February, and a new Database.com offering as a spin out of its Force.com Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

Day Two began with the news that Salesforce.com plans to acquire the Open Source oriented, Ruby-based application development platform, Heroku, for $212 million in cash. Salesforce.com and BMC Software also announced that … Read More »

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing market consolidation appears to be heating up with the second important acquisition announcement of the day coming from SuccessFactors who plans to buy CubeTree, a “social business platform” which permits greater communication and collaboration across organizations.

This is also SuccessFactors’ second acquisition, following its purchase of Inform in February.

Integrating social networking software into enterprise environments has been a hot topic since the idea of Web 2.0 first emerged. It has gained even greater urgency as Facebook and Twitter have become mainstream communications tools among business professionals on an ad hoc basis and corporations in a more concerted fashion.

But, the utopia that everyone is seeking is an integrated approach to social networking which embeds its capabilities into broader enterprise applications in a ‘seamless’ fashion that eliminates the integration issues, alleviates compliance concerns and encourages end-users to take fuller … Read More »

SuccessFactors, Inc. announced today that it is acquiring Inform Business Impact, an Australia-based provider of workforce analytics and planning solutions.

Here are my quick impressions about the business implications of this announcement:

This move confirms my prior predictions that the pace of acquisitions within the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) would accelerate and that major U.S.-based SaaS vendors would put greater emphasis on growing internationally in 2010.
The acquisition of an Australia-based SaaS vendor, on the heals of yesterday’s revelation that Salesforce.com recently acquired a Scotland-based SaaS vendor, illustrates that the on-demand services movement is taking root globally. In fact, approximately 30% of the over 1200 companies listed on THINKstrategies’ SaaS Showplace are headquartered outside the U.S.
This is SuccessFactors’s first acquisition, and it is clear that it plans to do many more because the company also announced today the hiring of Cisco Systems veteran Judy Blegen as its new VP of M&A … Read More »

SuccessFactors announced yesterday that Siemens AG has agreed to adopt its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based, on-demand performance and talent management solutions across its worldwide operations of approximately 420,000 users across 80 countries in 20 different languages.

This is the latest indication of the rapid adoption of SaaS-based solutions by companies of all sizes across nearly every industry and geography.

Specifically, this announcement is significant because,

It clearly illustrates that SaaS is well-suited for global enterprises, and further dispels the myth that it is just for small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that can’t afford the luxury of traditional, on-premise enterprise applications.
It also shows that European companies are becoming more comfortable adopting SaaS solutions despite past concerns about off-site and/or out-of-country hosting of corporate data.
It demonstrates the declining power of incumbent vendors within customer accounts, as SuccessFactors outmaneuvered SAP which already had its software installed at Siemens and shares … Read More »