On the heels of my Top Cloud Computing Stories of 2009 comes (appropriately enough) my Top 5 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2010. Let’s jump right into it.

1) There Will be Another Outage, and No One Will Panic
In 2009 there were two significant outages of Google’s Gmail service, which rendered it unavailable temporarily. The most interesting part of the story is that the outages are so rare that they were deemed newsworthy by the mainstream media. In 2010 there will likely be an outage of another major Cloud Computing vendor, and the reactions in the media will be the same. It will be covered broadly for 2 reasons:

• Outages are very rare
• Critics and IT luddites are looking for a story to keep the business side off of their backs

Either way, vendors have their best and brightest working to ensure that they don’t happen, and if they do happen they will be short-lived and you won’t even have to think about it. The problem fixes itself.

2) Google Enterprise Applications Will Gain Large Acceptance
In 2009 Google gained significant traction in the market with its Enterprise Apps (Gmail, Docs, Calendar) and in 2010 that trend will only accelerate. Enterprises spend approximately $17b annually on Microsoft Office, and Google’s pricing model combined with its flexibility mean Microsoft could be in trouble. Organizations are always looking for ways to save money, and this is an easy one.

3) Consolidation of Cloud Computing Vendors The big players in cloud computing (Salesforce, Google, Amazon Web Services) have all built good products with basic functionality, and rely on external players to augment them. They focus on what they do best, and outsource the rest.

As many of these augmentations become more mature and become more native to the platforms, look to see the smaller companies to get swallowed up. This creates more value for the big vendors while limiting their exposure to development risk, and increases their internal talent pools.

Combine the business reasons for acquisitions with the ongoing improvements capital markets, and consolidations should make a big comeback this year.

4) "Young" Vendors Will See Explosive Growth
As more parts of the various cloud computing platforms are further opened up for development, expect to see fresh young startups blossoming to fill business requirements. I also fully expect to see our company’s offerings around sales, service, and call centers to grow for these exact reasons.

5) Cloud Computing’s Growth Accelerates
The economic turmoil has been going for over 2 years now, and it appears we are in a new normal. This environment has forced companies to cut costs and run leaner than in previous years. With IT budgets either shrinking or headcount being reduced, it is no longer optional to optimize staff’s time. Organizations do not want to waste resources on maintaining email servers or other on-premise applications when on-demand applications in the cloud make more sense financially.

Did you know the federal government spends over $75B annually on IT? With that number in mind, you can imagine the enormous amount of manpower it takes to choose, customize, build, deploy, and maintain separate instances of applications to run the government’s operations. I cannot imagine a more perfect environment to deploy cloud computing, and it is apparent that the President “gets it” too.

In keeping with his initiative for lowering the costs of running government, the White House this year launched apps.gov, an online repository for federal agencies to explore and purchase cloud-based IT services. So instead of having to individually seek out vendors, government agencies now have a one-stop shop to get most of what they’re looking for. And guess what – salesforce.com and Google are featured vendors.  

In a year of giant bailouts, it’s about time the taxpayer got a break from politicians, except this time it’s technology that’s doing all the heavy lifting.

The fastest growing social media site in 2009 was without question Twitter. The notoriety seemed to explode with the Iranian election and ensuing chaos, where reporters were unable to provide accurate, timely information. With the government lockdown, the citizenry got information out to the world through Twitter on their mobile phones. A new dawn of media became legit overnight.

Twitter users rely on the service for more than just timely information, it has become a platform for open conversations around any topic. Company’s products and services have become fair game for both interested prospects and disappointed customers. Instead of calling a sales or customer service line, people are turning to other users for answers on Twitter - leaving companies in the dark. Anyone who has tried to navigate a customer service "dial 1 for X" menu understands why so many are reticent to use them.

Salesforce.com recognized this growing trend and created a truly elegant application that’s easy to use. Salesforce for Twitter allows companies to participate in conversations actively, and track those conversations within salesforce.com, providing a more complete view of their prospects and customers. This added information gives companies an opportunity to better serve these people, and in the channel of their constituent’s choosing.

With this application, if someone expresses interest in your company, you can respond to them on Twitter through salesforce.com. Likewise for customer service situations. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a 360˚ view of a customer, but having more information on hand certainly allows companies to provide more relevant service.

Check the video demo out below:

Yes, seriously, Sales Chatter from salesforce.com. If you were at the Dreamforce user’s conference this year, then you already know what this is about. If not, picture an application that combines functionality of Facebook, Twitter, and salesforce.com apps. You can update your status for co-workers to see, and you get a news feed of not only what others are up to, but what’s new in your favorite apps such as Content library updates.

You might think it’s too early to call this one of the biggest stories of 2009, but it is big news from the biggest player in enterprise cloud computing. Just as no one knew just how quickly Twitter would grow, I have a feeling we’re at the same point with Chatter. This could be truly huge.

For a quick video on what’s included and how it works, check out the video below.

I recently had a conversation with the VP of Sales at a large manufacturing company.  For the purposes of this discussion, I will call him John.  John and his sales organization have never had a centralized, collaborative CRM system before and they are about to begin a salesforce.com implementation.  Among the goals of the project is the need to consolidate the many point solutions they have used for managing their customers over the company’s 40-year history.   They recognize the need to establish consistent processes for the sales team and want to leverage workflow capabilities to improve communication.  After a series of fruitful meetings, John mentioned that he is working with IT to purchase mobile devices for the sales team because he has received a lot of demand from the team, and wants them to be as productive as possible with the new CRM tool.

The scenario described above is very common.  The benefits of leveraging mobile technology for a sales rep include increased productivity, more timely information, access to real-time data at the point of contact, and access to information without the overhead of lugging a clunky laptop.  All of this is theoretically sound, but don’t let your mobile strategy define itself without thoughtful consideration of questions that are sure to be raised as part of your implementation.  Addressing these issues proactively will allow you to separate fact from fiction and apply a mobile strategy that fits your organization and your users so that you can realize success.

Who are your users?
The diversity of the user base is a great place to start in defining a strategy.  It is common to have a mix of technologist and technophobes within the same sales team.  The technologists tend to demand all of the latest and greatest tools and technology as a means of making themselves more productive.  Without it, they claim that their efforts are diluted and they are bogged down with administrative overhead required to access information or log calls.  On the other hand, the technophobes will resist any sort of change, especially when it comes to technology, by claiming that the time spent to manage all of these new tools and gadgets will negatively impact the time they spend in front of the customer.

When it comes to mobile, you are wise to know your audience.  If your team is not accustom to using mobile technology for email and basic calendar management, you may want to take steps to introduce the device before you make it a critical component of your CRM strategy.  Users who have leveraged these tools in their personal lives or at a past job will be much more comfortable in adopting this technology as part of their work.

When it comes to people, it is also important to note that strong demand for a Blackberry, iPhone or other device from users who do not currently have these products, may be a red flag.  The grass may seem greener on the other side of the fence for those who have bought into the idea that these tools will make them more effective.  I recently worked with a sales group that insisted that they needed offline capabilities because they weren’t always “connected.”  Once we provided the offline functionality, they demanded mobile devices because they found it cumbersome to “lug around heavy laptops.”  Once they received the mobile device, they complained about the small screen and the difficulty of entering data with a small keyboard.  This is exactly the type of situation we want to control by proactively managing a mobile strategy.

How mature are your processes?
As the saying goes “Process before technology.”  Change management is a key component to any CRM implementation.  The introduction to new systems represents a disruption, and optimizing or changing processes will require that users have a clear understanding of their role and expectations.  The process of change must be managed deliberately to ensure that users are not left behind as they adjust to their new way of working. 

If process change is part of your implementation, it is common (and a good idea) for the mobile implementation is postponed to a second phase.  It is important that users are familiar with the goals they are trying to achieve before they take on learning how to manage multiple entry points. 

What do users need to do to get their job done?
It may seem obvious, but it is critical to give objective consideration to what your users need to accomplish using their mobile device.  A clear definition of use cases serves as the basis for streamlining key processes and maximizing efficiency for end users.  When defining mobile needs, many companies make the mistake of setting an expectation that anything that can be done with a laptop should be possible with a handheld, and this is simply not realistic.  Use case definition should help to separate fact from fiction when it comes to defining what functionality needs to be available.

The reality of a handheld is that the physical size, speed and ergonomics are significant challenges for some users.  These factors make processes that require consuming or reading data better candidates than those that require entering data.  This is especially true of complex data entry processes where there are many fields or pages to navigate.  This is not to say that call logging or data entry are not candidates, but scrutiny should be applied to processes that required extensive typing or scrolling as users will become easily frustrated. 

A failure to keep it simple when it comes to mobile will also likely equate to poor or incomplete data.  Typing on a small keyboard can be time consuming.  Moreover, navigating multiple screens can make a simple task daunting.  The resulting behavior for end-users is to cut corners, enter the minimum amount of data required, or neglect to enter anything at all.

What device suits your needs?
Mobile devices are not all created equal and there is no one answer to which is the best.  The strategy established must be consistent with the goals of the organization and the tools must be right for the job.  A thorough analysis of the right device should include alignment with the mobile use cases, feature functionality of the device, device-specific feature support offered by your CRM software, customization capabilities, and the service network.

How will security be maintained?
Finally, the need to secure your data and protect the intellectual property of the organization must be considered.  Users may demand access to ALL data through their mobile device, but the strategy must consider the risk of a lost or stolen device.  For ease of use, most systems do not require that users enter a password each time they are accessing their CRM application on the mobile device.  For this reason, it is important that data is evaluated by sensitivity so judgments can be made about what will and what will not be accessible.  Furthermore, a password policy on the device itself should be mandatory if there is risk of a breach.

This is not an exhaustive list of mobile strategy components, but does represent some key points of consideration.  The cost of implementing a mobile solution is not insignificant, so these basic questions will help to proactively plan rather than having to backtrack and repeat.
 

Remember When Video Killed The Radio Star?

By now we should recognize the signs of a major shift caused by a new, “disruptive” technology. After all, we have seen it happen so many times before. The only difference is that today the shifts are quick and dramatic, catching off guard anybody that dares to stand flatfooted. So what is causing the tremors this time? Cloud computing! And it is already hitting with a force that is off the scale, especially for organizations that are not looking for it or prefer to live in the “legacy” world of on-premises business computing strategy and applications.

Perhaps “Video Killed The Radio Star” is not the appropriate analogy to communicate a dramatic shift in computing technology, but for some reason that tune keeps playing in my head whenever I think about this evolution in computing. MTV was a dramatic shift that stopped careers for those unwilling to accept it. It opened the door for a new breed of performers that were willing to adapt. Yet it was only the pinnacle of the iceberg for all the technology changes that followed – from CDs replacing cassettes and vinyl, to iTunes and single song downloads.

Cutting edge performers had been putting out music videos since the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, not to mention the entire Monkeys TV show (which drove their albums to the top of the charts!). But it was the new technology of cable television and MTV that was the game changer. Cloud computing is the cable television of IT world. IT directors and departments will either have to grasp and ride the movement of computing to web service providers such as saleforce.com, Amazon Web Services and Google Apps, or find themselves and their employers on the clearance shelf of the business world because they have become irrelevant in the market, just like 8-track tapes.

The newspaper industry has experienced this shift as a result of technology change that helps to illustrate this point. The static newspaper has been driven down by the dynamic web page and email alerts for news. You don’t have to own, staff, and maintain huge printing plants running around the clock in order to sell and deliver the news today. Corporate size is not the advantage in distributing the news as it once had been thanks to the internet. Wireless and handheld access to the Internet has further made the hard copy delivery model a competitive disadvantage. The result has been a proliferation of news and information sites, and a long line of newspaper bankruptcies. The down economy has served to accelerate this phenomenon.  Think about this analogy as it relates to cloud computing. You can read other Model Metrics blogs from our technologists that explain in detail how we are leveraging salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services (the business unit) and Google Apps to create an elastic, powerful, and extremely cost effective new world order of computing.

Google “Amazon Web Services” if you want another perspective. My thoughts here are to sound the alarm. There is a change coming and you need to look up now to “the cloud” to take advantage of this opportunity to achieve competitive advantage, and in some cases survival, before it is too late.

Video killed the radio star…Cloud computing is going to kill traditional IT. Those that look to the cloud will be the new winners.

What do Siebel, RightNow, Oracle CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce.com all have in common? The answer is that none of them will change your business and further your CRM effectiveness all by themselves. If you are looking at any of these systems as being the savior for your organization, you are going to find yourself disappointed unless you augment your system with some conviction.

The benefits of CRM are well documented. Business of all sizes have, even in a down economy, made the investment in technologies and processes that will allow them to be more efficient, more effective, and more ROI focused in their sales and marketing activity. The recent economic slide has practically required that business leaders get serious about nurturing their existing customers and establish a sound plan for attracting new ones. However, the implementation of a CRM system does not, by itself, make for a CRM strategy.

The business problems (or opportunities) that drive the implementation of CRM foster deep-rooted convictions of the organization. These convictions represent the foundation from which the CRM strategy needs to be derived. Examples of common convictions include:

• customer retention
• margin retention
• market penetration
• growth rate
• reduction in sales cycle time
• response rate on new leads
• improved service levels
• competitive strategy
• market intelligence
• management of key sales activities
• and on and on and on….

The decisions that you make as part of your CRM solution implementation need to be targeted at accomplishing your strategy as you have defined it. User adoption and overcoming technological hurdles are important, but must not overshadow the core business needs that drive you to this investment.

When establishing your roadmap, make sure to communicate, design, train, reinforce, and manage to your convictions. Make no mistake that your success or failure is going to be more a function of your strategy in accomplishing these goals than it will by features and functionality of your software purchase.

We have had a lot of great interest in Cloud Loader, so the next question is "How do I start using it?"  Well, here is a simple 5 Step guide to get going with Cloud Loader to start doing integration for $0.10 an hour (or less with a reserved instance).

Step 1 – Sign Up for EC2
 

Step 2 – Sign into the EC2 Management Console

The Console is where you can go to create and manage your EC2 Instances.  Remember these are virtual servers and the console allows you to give them a static IP (Elastic IP), control the Security Group and stop and start your instances.  First off you need to create a new instance of the Cloud Loader AMI. 

Step 3 – Create a Cloud Loader Instance

Click on Instances→ Launch Instance→ Community AMIs and search on “Cloud_Loader” to find the Cloud Loader AMI.  Click the Select button.

After clicking Select you need to specify some specifics about your instance.  You will only need one instance and it can be a “Small” instance which will be fine to run the Cloud Loader.
 

Next click on “Create” next to the Key Pair Name option, enter a name for your key pair and download the key pair.  This will be required to SSH into your Cloud Loader instance.

 
Next you need to pick a Security Group for the instance.  You can use the default one or optionally specify other settings (which ports will be open).  EC2 by default has all ports closed except 22 for SSH.

Last Click “Launch” to launch your instance.  This will take 3-4 minutes to boot and fully launch.

Step 4 – Connect to your Instance

If you are using a PC you will need to use an SSH client such as PUTTy to log into your instance.  Click here for Windows instructions.

If you are using a Mac you can use the native terminal to connect.  Click here for detailed instructions on how to set up your certs and bash profile.

Step 5 – Configure your Instance

(Remember this is built on Apex Data Loader, so look here to learn more about it)

•    After logging in go to the /usr/local/dataloader directory
•    Create an FTP user on the Cloud Loader instance to use for the inbound FTP of data (the .csv file you want to load into Salesforce).
•    Edit the config.properties file with your username and password for SFDC
      Note: You will need to include your security token at the end of your password if you don’t whitelist the Amazon Elastic IP within Salesforce
•    Edit the process-conf.xml file with the data loader processes you want to run
•    Edit the automate-dl script to configure the email address you would like to use to send reports to.
•    Setup a cron to run the automate-dl script (the way you schedule automated processes in UNIX)

Final Notes

Once you have tested this approach it is likely you will want to modify the script or approach to suit your own business need.  With EC2 you can use Cloud Loader as a base AMI and then configure your own AMI based upon it with your own unique additions. 

You may also like to utilize EBS (Elastic Block Storage) with Cloud Loader to have persistent storage of your configuration files, incoming integration files or log files.  We plan to add this functionality in an upcoming release.  If you have any further suggestions for Cloud Loader, please email us at:  support@modelmetrics.com

CRM Kicks SaaS!!!
Why CRM Optimization Is Your Future

Optimization, Optimization, Optimization!!! I am amazed at the number of optimization projects that we are being retained to perform these days. Amazed and very impressed with what our clients are targeting as their objectives. They are taking CRM way beyond the borders of sales, marketing and customer support by using salesforce.com to transform their whole approach to business systems, collaboration, corporate strategy, and IT.

Companies coming to Model Metrics for optimization services have done so because they started to fully recognize the power of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based CRM model, also known as Cloud Computing. And they are they are asking us to create and implement exciting and diverse new functionality to extend the capabilities of salesforce.com. That’s why I’m declaring today that “CRM Kicks SaaS!”

How did we get here? There are some common themes that our optimization clients have shared with us, both bad and good, that can help explain:

The Bad
• Firms that have self-implemented found themselves guessing on how to architect their salesforce.com configurations as well as the how to leverage the appropriate feature sets. Often times sub-optimal decision were made. After all, it is hard to always pick the right path if this is one’s first time on the trail.
• Many companies don’t put enough emphasis on effectively training their users, sometimes relying on the “field of dreams” approach of build it and they will come. This is especially true when it comes to training senior and mid-level management on the skills they need to be successful with CRM. CRM has a huge human factor. Training, curriculum, and ongoing support are the steps for addressing this fact.
• Some firms did not leverage reports and dashboards that transform data into actionable knowledge. This resulted in a lack of value for managers, preventing them from reinforcing the importance of CRM adoption and preventing them from taking ownership of salesforce.com as the way the company operates.

I could go on and on here, but let me highlight where “CRM kicked some major SaaS” as I transition to the good.

The Good
• All of these companies got value and ROI even though they were not hitting on all cylinders because their first phases enabled them to be far more organized than ever before.
• These firms established salesforce.com as their central database for sales, marketing and/or customer support, making it their primary source of customer knowledge.
• Deploying salesforce.com was the easiest business system deployment ever for these companies because of how salesforce.com is delivered in a browser, requiring no software installation/maintenance, and very little if any IT involvement. This represented freedom and speed-to-value for business managers requiring infrastructure to support their strategies.
• Salesforce.com gave these companies a practical understanding of how SaaS business systems have the power to quickly transform processes and results, empowering companies of all sizes, industries, and business models with truly leading edge technology and capabilities.
• With their CRM foundation in place, the Force.com platform and Salesforce.com’s ever and rapidly evolving feature set (salesforce.com Sites is just around the corner) is making possible “optimizations” to existing processes as well as new processes and strategies. Because of this, many of our optimization clients are optimizing their salesforce.com solutions to implement strategies to support and expand their web strategies.

Bottom line – “CRM kicks SaaS!” If your company uses salesforce.com and you are still in your first phase of implementation, it is time to raise the bar and look to phase 2 - optimization. It is incumbent upon you to leverage the investment and accomplishments that you have made and act on plans for the future, regardless of whatever challenges were posed in phase 1. Look to the future because that is where the opportunities are going to be to achieve ongoing success.

So why do I need a server again to integrate with the cloud?

Historically one of the arguments against SaaS, or now “The Cloud” was that integration is difficult or expensive.  Several great providers have emerged in this space to make integration with cloud platforms inexpensive and more recently, even cloud based.  These approaches are great for many companies, but as you know one size doesn’t fit everyone and many companies don’t want to bring in another vendor.

Salesforce has made integration somewhat of a commodity with it’s constant improvements to the DataLoader application.  Most of you are probably familiar with it, but if not, it is a Java based client side tool that allows you to load data into Salesforce.  It can handle all of the basic CRUD operations you might expect.  It now supports direct database access as well so you don’t have to rely on .csv flat files as you did previously.

The other great thing about DataLoader is that you can take the JAR file and run it in a scripted and automated fashion to get integration on the cheap.  This approach works well to master customer data from an ERP system, or update nightly financials or orders.  It can also pull data out of Salesforce to feed a Data Warehouse for example.

The only issue, you need a server to host this puppy on.

As you know the “clouds” are converging and Salesforce, Google and Amazon all play well together.  So why not leverage the Amazon cloud to handle this type of integration?  Good news, it works great on Amazon, and is freely available for you to use.

Cloud Loader is a free pre-packaged AMI (Amazon Machine Instance) that you can literally have up and running in a few minutes and have data flowing into or out of Salesforce in the cloud.  It is based on Data Loader, but is fully automated and even has email notifications buit-in.

Cloud Loader does require that the data coming into Salesforce be available on a FTP server that is accessible from an Amazon EC2 Instance.  All you need to do within  Cloud Loader is add your mapping file as well as your Salesforce and FTP credentials and you are ready to roll.

If you want to give this a try, click here.