Managing Automation - December 2007 - (Page 11) application for human resources management. Since then, the company has gained approximately 25 customers and launched applications for financials and resource and revenue management in what Forrester analyst Ray Wang calls a “slow, controlled release.” SafetyNetOnDemand, meanwhile, emerged from stealth mode this fall, offering five core functions based on compliance and delivered via an SaaS model: HR, hiring, safety management, fleet management, and asset management. The vendor is targeting companies with as many as 50,000 employees in the fields of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, facilities management, and utilities. The upstart offers its applications for $100 per user, per month, and plans to release additional functionality, including CRM, SCM, financials, inventory, field services, PLM, manufacturing, GRC, mobility, and others every few weeks. A representative for SafetyNetOnDemand would not reveal whether it had signed any customers. The company is self-funded and makes its home in Wayne, PA, just a few miles from the headquarters of SAP America. In a research note in March, Gartner Research Vice President Ben Pring wrote, “For large, established IT solution providers, the SaaS market so far hasn’t appeared to have enough incremental growth potential to meaningfully contribute to revenue growth.” The vacuum, Pring went on, has created an opportunity for smaller players and upstarts to ply their offerings. Of course, such vacuums don’t last long, as applications king SAP proved in September with the announcement of its Business ByDesign product, an applications suite for companies with 100 to 500 employees. ByDesign will cover eight major functional areas: financial, customer relationship, human resources, supply chain, supplier relationship, project, compliance management, and executive management support. Analysts disagree over whether ByDesign should be considered true SaaS, since SAP will deliver the product from a database that features “isolation per tenant.” Although SAP will have its work cut out for it in pitching ByDesign to a mid-market segment that already buys its Business One and All in One products, its estimable position as the applications leader means it won’t have to shout above the throngs to be heard. Meanwhile, veteran on-demand provider NetSuite is readying its technology for vertical specialists. NetSuite, which provides mostly small and mid-sized companies with ondemand applications for accounting/ERP, CRM, and various e-commerce functions, recently introduced a product for its application development platform called SuiteBundler. Using the new offering, NetSuite’s services partners can create vertically oriented applications within the NetSuite environment for companies in different industries. SuiteBundler and similar offerings, such as Salesforce.com’s force.com open development platform, represent an attack on one of ondemand’s perceived shortcomings: its lack of customization. Couple that with a growing field of providers, and SaaS starts to look truly disruptive. Scan A Back inMA MA DECEMBER 2006 fter two decades of maneuvering and adapting to changing market conditions to sustain productivity gains, manufacturers might have thought they had nowhere to go but down. But MA reported that there was still plenty of headroom. The key would be a shift in thinking about what constituted meaningful productivity improvements, and changing internal organizations and cultures to wring out more efficiency. MA DECEMBER 2002 s the market was starting to sort out standards for developing Web services, manufacturers were advised to get in on the action. Early adopters were figuring out their strategies to leverage the technology, and MA recommended starting with a small pilot project that connected three non-mission-critical applications. Meanwhile, new companies were coming onto the scene to address security issues. CONSONA CHIEF WILL PRESS ON WITH ACQUISITIONS A C onsona Corp., an amalgamation of ERP and CRM vendors serving small and mid-sized companies, is one of the enterprise software companies built up using a growth-through-acquisition model. But while some vendors that rely on private equity to sustain their acquisitive strategy have been thwarted recently by weak market conditions, Consona has no plans to pull back on the reins. Consona, formerly known as M2M Holdings, was launched formally in 2003 when equity firm Battery Ventures acquired and took ERP provider Made2Manage Systems private. The company received an additional $50 million early in 2006 when Thoma Cressey Equity Partners took a minority stake in the company. After a string of more than 10 acquisitions and having amassed a cusJeff Tognoni tomer base of 4,500, Consona expects to finish 2007 with $140 million in revenue. The company made $30 the year Made2Manage went private. At its recent annual user conference in Orlando, CEO Jeff Tognoni stressed that Consona’s approach to acquisitions — targeting established, microniche vendors with a razor-sharp focus on customer intimacy — is the key to its endurance. “Quality deals get done in any market,” M A D E C E M B E R 19 9 7 T he warehouse was moving off the shelf and into the enterprise as an integral part of the supply chain. Warehouse management systems were turning a static, manual function into a dynamic, automated — and differentiating — activity with global reach. Meanwhile, as customer demand increased and the market shifted from custom products to broader-based supply chain solutions, WMS vendors were undergoing a wave of consolidation. M A D E C E M B E R 19 9 2 F actory automation systems integrators that originated as in-house service providers had an edge over independent integrators, in terms of systems expertise, people resources, financial stability, and management and implementation experience. The big question on customers’ minds, however, was their objectivity. Consulting arms that had spun off from the likes of Digital Equipment Corp., Grumman, and IBM were taking pains to overcome perceptions of bias. 11 December 2007 http://force.com http://Salesforce.com
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