Cloud computing makes applications no longer an advantage

In order to be able to continue to succeed and develop, many businesses are beginning to find ways to gain a competitive advantage. Specifically in a wide range of activities on the start: from completely changed marketing and sales process, to optimize the background process, and then from the full understanding of customer needs, to the development of business agility, in a word difficult to summarize.

Twenty years ago, many organizations needed to leverage corporate applications to promote these activities to gain a competitive advantage. To be precise, they implement a custom packaged software framework that differentiates their processes and practices from their competitors.

This customized implementation requires two things: time and money. For example, customizing SAP software systems typically takes two years and costs $ 10 million, while customizing the Siebel software system can take 18 months and cost millions of dollars. However, many companies are willing to invest resources in such customized projects because they believe that doing so can provide a competitive advantage. This is true for many businesses, as evidenced by their unique data architecture and workflow.

But then there was cloud computing.

Legacy applications: no longer a competitive advantage

Today, the world is rapidly migrating to software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing applications, and the idea of ​​winning a competitive edge with legacy enterprise applications no longer works.

SaaS applications are so appealing for many reasons. They provide robust solutions that are fast to implement, seamlessly upgraded, and tested by thousands of other users. As David Cearley, vice president of Gartner Group, a well-known research firm, claims, SaaS and cloud computing "are ready for a new IT approach that allows individuals and businesses to choose how they can get or deliver IT services Rather than focus on the constraints of traditional software. "So it seems no wonder SaaS is widely adopted; Gartner predicts that worldwide SaaS revenue in 2012 is expected to reach 14.5 billion.

In addition, SaaS applications, by their very nature, focus on provisioning, delivering real value by eliminating the need for customers to spend long, costly, custom projects. While it is true that each company implements Salesforce.com applications in a slightly different manner, it is virtually the same in all respects compared to two decades ago.

Perhaps most importantly, the configuration for multiple customers has become more and more homogeneous due to the atomization and decentralization of traditional enterprise applications. Instead of buying an entire set of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suites, customers order the best of breed point solutions in their class, such as Intacct in accounting, Zuora in billing, and marketing automation Marketo, Concur in expense management and many other solutions. Each of these single-point solutions looks almost identical to different customers.

The cloud era is slightly better than its competitors

How do organizations gain a competitive advantage given the increasingly homogeneous nature of SaaS applications deployed by different companies? In short, this requires a combination of point solutions and their competition in the cloud Advantage of the process logic. The current cloud-based single-point application software has two main purposes: First, store data, the second is to provide application logic in order to perform a specific business functions. For example, the customer support process is performed by a set of logic, while the expense management process is performed by another set of logic. This means that any process that is not limited to a narrow business function requires some kind of integration between several single-point SaaS solutions.

As cloud computing enters the mainstream, businesses need to choose the best combination of SaaS systems and integrate them better than their competitors to gain the advantage. Fortunately, cloud computing applications give business owners greater control over making IT decisions. Gone are the days when CIOs unilaterally chose a large ERP solution for the entire enterprise; now business owners can choose the best SaaS solution in their class to support their specific requirements. As a result, the remaining challenge is to integrate the best of these different competing solutions and to differentiate the organization from its competitors.

Looking to the future

So, where does this make us go? In the new cloud-centric IT landscape, when considering integration strategies, you should consider the following issues:

Is your SaaS strategy exactly the same as the cloud computing model, is it simple enough to offset the benefits of cloud computing (in other words, you do not have to pay a high consulting fee to order a SaaS solution? , Which lasted 18 months to integrate everything). Can your SaaS integration strategy give you a competitive edge through your unique business processes? (In other words, integration is more than consolidation of data and consolidation of business processes.) How flexible are your integration methods? Facing rapidly changing business Environment, can they change quickly? (It is easy to deploy point-to-point, custom integrated systems, but these integrated systems can be challenging and expensive to adapt as your business needs change.)

Previously used software provided a competitive advantage, but it is no longer the case. Cloud computing makes the competitive environment more fair. Large and small businesses now have access to a large number of SaaS applications, and the choice is more and more widely. If you want to compete in the cloud computing economy, you need a SaaS strategy that is focused on integration to improve operational efficiency and agility, drive innovation and expand customer reach.