Rhianna Collier, VP of the Software Division, congratulates the 2011 CODiE Awards finalists in the business software categories.
SIIA Announces Finalists for 2011 CODiE Awards in Business Software
April 11, 2011 By
SIIA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 26th annual CODiE Awards in the business software categories. A list of the finalists may be reviewed at http://www.siia.net/codies/2011/finalists.asp.
One hundred thirty‐one nominations from 98 companies were selected as finalists from among 395 total
nominations. Nominated products underwent an extensive review by judges via live demonstration, trial
product access, and analysis of product documentation.
“We are pleased to have such a diverse range of companies and products as finalists this year,” said
Rhianna Collier, Vice President of the SIIA Software Division. “The competition is always tough and it
reflects the level of innovation across a wide range of companies in this industry. The growth in
participation certainly mirrors what we are seeing as priorities in the business software market -
especially the need for effective integration of applications and demand for powerful security
solutions.”
Winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 25th at the CODiE Awards Luncheon, to be held as part of the SIIA All About the Cloud conference.
SIIA Members-only Issue Brief: Key Characteristics of a PaaS offering
March 29, 2011 By
Authored by Amit Manghani, SAP and Rachel Lyubovitzky, SaaShr.com
The Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) industry continues to grow rapidly. The success of SaaS is driving broad change across the technology industry. Software vendors, both large and small, are contemplating on how to adapt to the new paradigms of the SaaS market, while a large number of developers across the world are moving to SaaS application development.
One of the most significant implications of this broad based change is the emergence of a new kind of software platform. The increase in SaaS application consumption and development is driving the need for a new set of platform technologies built specifically to support SaaS. In this issue brief, we outline the key attributes/elements that characterize a “best-in-class” Platform-As-A- Service (PaaS) offering – a cloud-enabled application development platform.
SIIA members can download the full paper here.
For information about joining SIIA and the benefits of membership, contact Seth Dean.
SIIA CEO Interview with Mark Symonds, Plex Systems
February 14, 2011 By
About the Author
Mark Symonds is President and CEO of Plex Systems, Inc., developers of Plex Online, Cloud ERP for the manufacturing enterprise. Symonds’ IT experience includes a highly successful entrepreneurial venture, and IT business consulting at Arthur Andersen & Co. (now Accenture). Symonds holds an MBA in finance and accounting from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in economics and French from the University of Rochester. He is a Certified Public Accountant; certified in production and inventory management (CPIM) by the American Production and Inventory Control Society; and holds a variety of industry association memberships, including the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA), Industrial Fastener Institute (IFI), the Forging Industry Association (FIA), the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) and the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA).
Symonds and his family live in the Greater Detroit area.
What will the software industry look like in 3, 5, even 10 years from now?
There is no question that SaaS, or the Cloud delivery model, will continue to grow as the preferred way to deliver business software applications. Point solution vendors such as Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors and NetSuite have led the way. It is inevitable that deep, vertical full-suite SaaS solutions will gain widespread adoption.
ERP Forecast
We see a changing of the guard in ERP. The major companies when I began my career were Cullinet, Walker, Dun&Bradstreet and McCormick & Dodge. Those mainframe players were replaced by a large number of client-server vendors. Many of the famous companies of the 80′s and 90′s have already disappeared into the abyss at Infor.
Many of today’s ERP brands will not survive. The chasm is too deep and wide for them to get to a true and sustainable SaaS business model and technology.
As I see it, technology will be the least of their problems. Subscription pricing, SAS-70, Service Level Agreements and agile development will do them in.
More vendors of scale will likely offer deep and wide solutions to specific vertical markets. Generic ERP that must be heavily modified for each industry will give way to comprehensive, purpose-built offerings meeting the needs of users in a given market. [Read more...]
‘It’s Time to Sell the Yugo,’ or ‘Why Software Compliance and Piracy Enforcement Needs a 25 Year Upgrade’
February 1, 2011 By
Written by Jim Nauen, VP, Global Sales
A few weeks ago as I was getting ready to speak at a local HTCIA chapter in California, I started thinking about how little progress has been made in Software Compliance over the last 25 years. Having recovered over $130 million in compliance revenue over the last 20+ years for a number of large and small software vendors, it seems in 2011 that Software Compliance and Piracy Enforcement is still largely a matter of blind luck for many software vendors.
Hit or miss manual audits, whistle blower leads, channel partner tip offs, even mystery dialing are still the main source of overuse and piracy enforcement leads 25 years later, which is like driving in the dark with your headlights off and hoping to find the road. In keeping with the 80s, let’s call it the Yugo strategy of compliance revenue recovery. Why would you wait and hope that these leads come to you, instead of using modern methods of aggressively tracking and pursuing companies illegally using your software?
To continue reading this post, please visit the V.i. Labs blog.
Jim Nauen
SIIA CEO Interview with Bill Loss, SaaShr.com (Part 3)
January 21, 2011 By
What will the software industry look like in 3, 5, even 10 years from now? And what customer demands and business trends will drive changes in software products, how they’re developed, and the industry that provides them?
Given the dynamics of innovation and ever-changing user landscape, in many ways it’s difficult to predict what the software industry will look like in 3 years let alone 5 or 10 years. With this said, however, here are some thoughts for consideration.
Long-term predictions on the future of Software: It is said that at any point, if someone gets a brilliant idea, two other people in the world get the same idea at the same time. Ideas will become cheaper and more readily available. Software will continue to help abstract much of the thinking behind and completion of processes that are necessary to perform tasks more efficiently. Emphasis will continue to be placed on improving user experience, where application user interfaces will become more intuitive and replace the need for online help and other forms of user documentation. Software will also continue to incorporate collaborative elements such as crowd sourcing and will evolve in response to the trend of information sharing.
Intellectual Property: An interesting aspect of the future of software is the question, “What types of devices and products will evolve to a point where software drives their use?” For instance, our vehicle can tell us where we are through global positioning or let us know when our vehicle’s tires are low on air, with software potentially being a key component to how this technology evolves. Recently, vehicles are being equipped with software technology to avoid collisions and change handling capabilities depending on driving conditions. Who’s to say in the next several decades our vehicles won’t be performing most of the driving for us, and if so, using software as a service (SaaS) via the cloud, will this mean our vehicles will require security software to protect against viruses???