AccMan never knowingly under opinionated

Missing the point

I was enjoying John Stokdyk’s analysis of what he calls the ‘third wave of ERP‘ until I reached the end:

But not everyone shares that view. Gartner analyst Yvonne Genovese commented in SearchCIO-Midmarket.com earlier this year that users still don’t want to hand over their business processes and the protection it provides for their corporate data. “Those things are so tied together that it’s hard to have that world everyone would like to live in. There’s really not been a success story where a complicated business app has been deployed as a software as a service model,” she said.

So, a healthy scepticism is still advised. Nevertheless, the responses of both pure-play and incumbent developers suggests that ERP as a service is on its way. As well as changing the commercial relationships between suppliers and customers – to the latter’s advantage, according to SaaS enthusiasts – the new approach may introduce other changes.

Gartner is not focused on the mid-range. How do I know? Because the bulk of their analysis revenue comes from vendors that serve the Global 2000. Why does this matter? Because it is the small and mid-range where we will see the short to mid term action. Similarly, how does Gartner ‘know’ that: “There’s really not been a success story where a complicated business app has been deployed as a software as a service model?” Because they’ve not seen it. I am seeing otherwise. Did they miss Workday’s recent monster win? Are they missing NetSuite’s growth numbers? Have they seen Brian Sommer’s thoughts on NetSuite’s OpenAir acquisition?

What John is failing to understand is not that applications are moving to the Internet cloud but that the ones which are most interesting are doing things differently and offering a genuine value play for customers. As I’ve said before, building systems based on a 600 year old methodology is retarded. John then concludes:

As David Carter has frequently warned, traditional transactional-processing systems have fallen down when it comes to management reporting. As the third wave of internet accounting reaches these shores, the test it faces will be whether it can redress the shortcomings of previous approaches as well as reducing the cost of business data processing.

It’s way more radical than that. Reporting is important but it doesn’t earn business a penny. Business wants to earn from their software investments, not re-invent wheels for a marginal cost benefit. A little wider and more authoritative reading might cure this kind of myopia.

Finally, while professionals have a big say in what happens with business applications, they are not the only point of influence. Assuming otherwise is both foolish and arrogant.