The death of packaged software

Erik Keller has an interesting editorial over on Sandhill.com, where he argues that there is a shift going on in corporate IT in favor of building more applications in-house (or through contract developers) instead of buying software packages. Keller made some of the same arguments a couple of years ago, and I commented on them back then.

Basically, his argument is that there are three trends at work today that are making custom development a more viable option: service-oriented architectures (SOA), which make it easier to integrate custom software components into existing systems; the availability of open source, which can be used as a starting point for custom systems; and offshore development firms that are developing high quality code at low cost.

These points are generally well understood, although the implication that they represent a threat to software package vendors is not fully recognized. Keller made these same points two years ago.

But in his editorial this time, Keller points out something new: three negative factors on the side of commercial software providers that are fueling the trend toward custom development. Ironically, he says, these factors are exactly the same as those that worked in favor of packaged software in the past.

According to Keller, these factors are (quoting him directly, here):

Slow time to market: Like the mainframe-oriented IT shops of 1980s, many of the largest enterprise-software vendors find it difficult and expensive to quickly incorporate the latest technology into their products in a timely and innovative fashion. They also tend to have limited experience with the latest tool sets.

Poor quality: Internal IT groups often used to fail when they attempted large, complex projects. Over the last 15 years, buyers have found that most enterprise software vendors and systems integrators are no better and actually less accountable than their internal capabilities.

High expense: With large upfront charges and on-going maintenance fees hovering around 20 percent of list price, enterprise software has taken on the same bad characteristics of inefficiently managed internal IT staffs.

As I wrote two years ago, I still believe that commercial software packages are the best route for most companies, especially small and mid-size organizations that are ill-equipped to maintain, let alone develop, comprehensive enterprise applications. For example, if a manufacturing firm has difficulty implementing SAP, or Oracle, or Great Plains, just wait until it attempts to develop time-phase material requirements planning or available-to-promise logic from scratch.

That being said, however, the economics of the build-vs-buy decision are difficult to argue with. By paying approximately 20% of the license fee for maintenance each year for Oracle or SAP, you are essentially buying the software again every five years. Although companies should continue to use commercial software for basic horizontal functions, such as finance and accounting, manufacturing, and basic order processing, the build-option is becoming much more attractive for complementary and industry-specific or company-specific functionality.

The transition of the major vendors toward service-oriented architectures (SOA) is making the build-option easier, with the ability to plug in such niche-functionality more easily. As Andy Bartels at Forrester pointed out recently, by embracing SOA, vendors such as SAP and Oracle are unleashing forces they cannot control, as the same SOA that makes it easier for vendors and partners to build composite applications also make it easier for customers to build their own composite applications.

The vendors' embrace of SOA is actually sowing the seeds of their own destruction. But they have no choice. They can either get on the SOA train or get run over it.

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Oracle going dark

Josh Greenbaum is complaining that Oracle seems to be less and less open these days in dealing with the press and analyst community and is adopting a "circle the wagons mentality" as it moves into year two of its Fusion strategy.

In his article in Datamation, he writes, "Oracle is harder and harder to cover, and harder and harder to understand – at a time when its message is more complex and craves more understanding than ever before."

Josh contrasts Oracle's recent "closed door policy" with that of two of its top competitors:

Two recent conferences I've attended, SAP's Sapphire and Microsoft's Convergence, were noteworthy for the opportunities the companies afforded analysts and the press to talk to executives, customers, and partners. For anyone trying to answer the hard questions – like which company has a better long-term strategy – it's much easier to have an opinion when you're given something to go on. Especially if that information is constantly updated and refined by access to the actual decision-makers.

He also points out that when access is limited, it's easier for analysts to write negative stories than positive.

Ironically, I've been hearing positive things recently about Oracle's work with its J.D. Edwards acquisition. One source, who had a long career with JDE and still has contacts within Oracle's JDE offices in Denver, says that Oracle is doing a far better job with JDE than PeopleSoft ever did.

Furthermore, in spite of some misteps at first, Oracle seems to have gotten its act together in how it tests and releases upgrades for JDE.

So, why the entrenchment at Oracle?

Rolling up the rollup: SSA Global to be acquired by Infor

SSA Global, one of the primary consolidators of enterprise system vendors is now itself being acquired by Infor, another consolidator. There's a short press release on Infor's website just now, announcing the deal, which gives $19.50 a share to SSA shareholders, the majority of which are two investment firms, Cerberus Capital Management and General Atlantic Partners.

Why the deal? My guess is that SSA's investors see it as the best opportunity to get out. SSA's stock price has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the year and was trading around $16.00 the past week or so. Infor's offer of $19.50 represents a 20% premium over its current price. Sold.

Of course, this is from the investor's viewpoint. What about the customer's perspective? At first glance, I can't imagine that customers will be excited about this deal. I won't try to list all of the acquisitions that SSA Global and Infor each have made over the past several years. Use the search field in the right column to search for "SSA" or "Infor" and you'll find everything I've written about each firm's products over the past four years. Some, such as SSA's Baan (now ERP LN), were big names in the past. Some, such as SSA's Epiphany, have good up-to-date technology. Some, such as Infor's Lilly Visual applications and the former SCP Adage (Agilisys) system have deep industry functionality. But the list of products is very, very long, and it's hard to imagine how the combined entity can give adequate attention to such a diverse portfolio of products.

If you are a current customer of SSA or Infor, please let me know your experience with either vendor and your view of this deal.

Microsoft beefs up business intelligence with bid for Proclarity

I missed this one earlier this month. Microsoft is building out its offerings for business intelligence tools with an acquisition of niche BI vendor Proclarity.

The move makes a lot of sense. Business intelligence continues to be a hot market, as companies of all sizes are putting more and more information into databases but are finding that its not as easy to pull it out and make sense of it. Secondly, the market for business intelligence software is highly fragmented, with many small players, such as ProClarity. Although there has been some vendor consolidation already (e.g. Business Objects acquisition of Crystal Decisions, and Hyperion's merger with Brio, both in 2003), there is much room for more. Although Proclarity only has about 150 employees, it is a well-respected name and Microsoft is smart to snap it up now before someone else tries.

From a technology perspective, the deal also makes sense. ProClarity's offerings already interoperate well with Microsoft's Excel, SQL Server, and SharePoint. Microsoft says that it plans to integrate ProClarity into its Server Platform business, which means buyers of Microsoft SQL Server will be less likely to third-party solutions to fill their business intelligence and reporting needs.

Builder AU has more on the deal, including other steps that Microsoft is taking to strengthen its position in business intelligence.

Manugistics to be acquired by JDA

Earlier this week, Manugistics agreed to be acquired by JDA, one of the leading software vendors in the retail industry, ending years of speculation about Manugistics' future.

Manugistics, one of the leading supply chain management vendors, had been struggling Manugistics has had a rough for the past few years. Revenue was at a peak of $310 million in 2002, but dropped to $272M in 2003, $243M in 2004, and $193m in 2005.

JDA is one of the leading enterprise system vendors in the retail industry, the other being Oracle with its recent acquisition of Retek, and SAP, which is building its own solutions largely from scratch.

JDA has been around since the 1970s, and has been acquiring a number of smaller firms in the retail space over the past seven years, including Timera (workforce management), Engage and Zapotec (advertising, marketing, and promotions), Vista (collaborative commerce), J-Commerce (point-of-sale), E3 (inventory optimization), Neovista (data mining), Intactix (retail space management), and Arthur Retail (advanced planning and allocation).

JDA's bid for Manugistics gives it an even wider portfolio of products to offer its retail clients. The deal also gives JDA access to Manugistics' enviable list of top retail clients, such as Hershey Foods, Federated Stores, Kraft, ConAgra, Unilever, Campbell Soup, Avon, Limited Brands, Staples, Sears, Black and Decker, and Goodyear Tire.

However, one must question what JDA intends to do with those Manugistics products that are not related to retail, such as Manugistics extensive offerings in aerospace and defense, which it acquired from WDS a few years ago. Will JDA continue to support those products, or will be there be a series of divestitures from JDA to buyers interested in Manugistics' cats and dogs, as so to speak?

Supply Chain Digest has more on the JDA/Manugistics deal.

A Spectator reader also points out that Manugistics' competitor, i2, has wasted no time jumping on the PR horse, offering Manugistics' clients a program to "upgrade" to i2's products.

Update, Apr. 28. The word to me from inside Manugistics is that most employees are feeling good about the deal. The rumors and speculation about Manugistics' future were getting tiring and this deal resolves questions about its financial viability. My source, who has been through several acquisitions, says you can tell alot about a company by how its executives present themselves, and the folks from JDA have been particularly upbeat and appear to "have it together." Manugistics has lost some good leadership in the past few years and will benefit from the management depth that JDA brings to the deal.

My source points to the strong combination of consumer-packaged goods (Manugistics core strength) with retail (JDA core strength). He is less concerned about the future of other products in Manugistics' portfolio: those targeting government, travel, transportation, and hospitality sectors. Even though these comprise a small part of Manugistics' business, they are profitable and they often lead to innovations that can be introduced into Manugistics other products.

Bottom line? The deal looks good from all angles.

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Oracle upgrades Siebel's CRM software-as-a-service

Oracle last week released a new version of the CRM on-demand product that it picked up with its acquisition of Siebel. The new version (release 10), has been rebranded as Oracle CRM On Demand, and it includes improved customization capability, new features for sales and service, and enhancements for the life sciences and financial services industries.

What's most interesting to me, though, is what this says about Oracle's commitment to software-as-a-service (SaaS). Oracle has picked up many new products in the past two years, including a huge portfolio of applications from Siebel. But one of Oracle's first moves is to upgrade and rebrand this on-demand product from Siebel.

Oracle offers its own E-Business Suite as a hosted service, including its own front-office products which used to compete with Siebel's. But Oracle's offerings are all built under a single-tenant architecture: a separate installation for each client. If you visit Oracle's on-demand data center in Austin, what you'll see is racks and racks of Dell servers running Linux, each one supporting a different client.

In contrast, Siebel's offering--which it originally acquired from Upshot to compete with Salesforce.com--is a multi-tenant architecture. In other words, it can host multiple clients on the same system instance--a far more efficient and scalable approach than the single tenant architecture. At least that's the theory: Salesforce.com, the poster-child for the multi-tenant approach has suffered service outages that highlight the potential for a single failure to impact many customers.

Oracle CRM On-Demand is a tiny part of its business today, but it gives Oracle's engineers and support professionals valuable experience in the multi-tenant approach. It will be interesting to see how Oracle positions its new CRM On-Demand relative to its other CRM offerings, and whether it can avoid some of the missteps of Salesforce.com in maintaining service levels.

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Oracle to extend support for JDE on IBM iSeries

At its Collaborate 2006 user conference in Nashville this week, Oracle announced that it will continue support for existing J.D. Edwards Enterprise-One and World products beyond 2013, the date to which it had previously committed support for IBM's iSeries hardware (formerly AS/400).

Oracle's decision basically means it will continue to provide support for applications running over IBM's DB2 database product, which competes with Oracle's flagship database.

As far as I can tell, this week's decision does not say anything about how or whether Oracle will support IBM's DB2 as part of its Fusion strategy to merge Oracle's various applications into a single code base.

I've speculated in the past whether Oracle would try to move existing IBM database users to Oracle and when support ends whether it would try to sell off the remaining users to someone like SSA Global, which makes a business out of supporting IBM-based applications. This week's decision probably says that the answer is, for the second half of that speculation, no. Oracle probably is finding that the maintenance business for these users is profitable and better kept than sold.

Computerworld has more on Oracle's decision to continue support for JDE on IBM.

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Green screen refuses to die

Wal-Mart sticks to RFID plans despite CIO switch

Just two weeks after I wrote a long post about Wal-Mart's IT systems under CIO Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart switches CIOs.

Dillman is still with Walmart, however. She is moving to head of risk management and benefits administration. The new CIO, Rollin Ford, comes from a position as head of the retailers supply chain and logistics function.

Dillman was the driving force behind Wal-Mart's push to RFID. For Walmart suppliers hoping that the CIO switch will mean a slow-down in Wal-Mart's RFID program, forget it. According to Line56,

One of the first actions taken by incoming CIO Rollin Ford was to publicly reaffirm Wal-Mart's RFID project. "There will be no slowing down," Ford stated.

It's not that Ford will need much of a learning curve. In his previous position, he was a member of the Wal-Mart RFID executive steering committee for the past three years. long learning curve.

Ford added that Walmart will be retiring the RFID EPC standard Gen 1, replacing it with Gen 2, effective June 30.

Computerworld has more on Wal-Mart's CIO switch and implications for its RFID program.

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New action in the engineer-to-order ERP space

Following the acquisition of Encompix by Made2Manage, another deal in the engineer-to-order ERP market is taking place. Now Intuitive, a small manufacturing systems provider, is buying out Relevant, a long-standing provider of project-based manufacturing systems.

Intuitive has been quiet for many years, but since being bought in November 2005 by Marlin Equity Partners, a private equity firm, it has started an acquisition program, first picking up SupplyWorks, a supply chain management provider, in March, and now acquiring Relevant.

Relevant is best known for its use at the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, where its project-orientation is particularly well-suited.

However, there is an indication that Intuitive may not be interested so much in Relevant's product but rather is buying its customer base and expertise in the ETO sector. The press release says, "Intuitive's long-term product plan is to adapt Relevant's project-driven processes and functionality to the Intuitive ERP product. Intuitive will offer continued support to Relevant's customers and deliver several enhancements under development."

There's more on the Relevant deal in a press release on the Intuitive website.

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Making money in software with a niche-industry strategy

Tom Milay, Vice President of Industry Solutions at Made2Manage, contacted me concerning my article last week on his firm's recent acquisition of Encompix. Generally, he felt that what I wrote was accurate, but he noted my questioning of how the firm could make money by running each of its acquisition as a separate business unit. So, I took him up on his offer to do a phone interview, which now forms the basis for this post.

Background
Back in 2003, Made2Manage was a small publicly-held Tier III ERP focused on small industrial manufacturers. I had evaluated the vendor's products once or twice and was impressed with its "small footprint" and web-based training that seemed to be appropriate for the small-company market that it was going after.

Shortly thereafter, Made2Manage was taken private by Battery Ventures, a venture capital firm, for $30 million. The word I heard from inside and outside the company was that the new management team was scaling back on product development in order to focus on selling into the installed base: sort of a "back to basics" strategy.

Since then, I noticed that Made2Manage was quietly accumulating several niche vendors in the small business ERP space, several of which I had evaluated in the past. Its acquisitions included DTR Software (ERP for plastics manufacturers), ADS (a former M2M reseller and developer of M2M extensions), Cimnet Systems (ERP for PCB manufacturers), and AXIS (ERP for manufacturers of "rolled products," such as cable and sheet metal). Then, last month Made2Manage acquired Encompix, a tiny vendor focused on the engineer-to-order segment.

So, what's behind this series of acquisitions and how does Made2Manage rationalize them? If the targets were struggling prior to being acquired, what does Made2Manage plan to do differently? Milay came to Made2Manage with the Battery Ventures deal, so he was in a position to clarify the firm's strategy.

The benefits of an industry focus
I would sum up the strategy as one of intense focus on very narrow manufacturing niches. This would be in contrast to the major Tier I vendors such as SAP and Oracle, which build systems that apply horizontally across a broad range of industries--manufacturing and non-manufacturing--with industry-specific functionality that can be switched on or off according to the client's needs.

Made2Manage is taking the opposite approach. Instead of configuring a general-purpose package to serve a specific industry, M2M offers a package that simply serves that industry, or sub-industry, and nothing more. If SAP is a Swiss army knife, M2M's portfolio of packages is a draw of knives, each for a specific use: one might be a meat cleaver knife, another a filleting knife, and another a paring knife. So, with this approach, M2M does not want to rewrite its acquired systems to a common code-base. In other words, it does not want to turn them into a single Swiss army knife. It wants to keep them as separate knives.

"The fit of a product to a specific manufacturing sector requires separate products," Milay told me. "The market is shifting away from generalized applications, such as SAP, which requires extensive configuration, to packages that fit the customer's industry sector out of the box."

A little side note, here, to say that I'm partial toward industry-specific solutions. I've seen the advantage of a niche approach in many sales demonstrations that I've viewed in the past 15 years. A tiny vendor such as DTR (plastics) or Encompix (engineer-to-order) can beat SAP or Oracle in a sales demonstration simply by bringing in presales personnel that speak the language of the prospect.

For example, an Oracle or SAP rep might be assigned to the process manufacturing sector. But even that might not be enough of a focus. The rep might be selling to a pharmaceutical manufacturer on Monday, and a winery on Tuesday. Wednesday he makes a sales call at an injection-molding plant. What does he know about injection-molding? Not much. He knows a lot about Oracle's Fusion middleware and its vision for next-generation web services but not much about finite scheduling, which is critical to an injection molding company.

On Thursday, the DTR sales guy calls on the same injection-molding plant. He's never been in a drug plant or a winery. All week he has been talking to other plastics manufacturers.

Who connects better with the prospect?

Now, DTR may not win the deal. The prospect might be more comfortable going with a name-brand, such as Oracle or SAP. But in most cases, the prospect will be far more comfortable with the DTR sales guy. I have seen scenario many times, not just with DTR but with other niche vendors as well.

Four strategic elements
With that background, here are key points of M2M's strategy, according to Milay.

• First, shift from a software focus to a solution focus. The firm's deep industry expertise allows it to make money by providing post-implementation assessments and general business consulting, beyond the initial sale and installation of the software. This deepens the relationship with the client and brings additional revenue from the client base.

• Second, automate customer service and support. One of the first things that M2M does when integrating a new acquisition is to document the most frequently encountered customer service problems and post them on its Web portal for customer support. It also deploys Web-based training for customers, if it does not already exist. As a result, 55% of customer incidents can be resolved by the customer using the Web, requiring little if any intervention by a customer support representative. According to Milay, automation of the support function is key to making the operating units profitable.

• Third, centralize some corporate functions. M2M does operate each software package in its portfolio as a separate operating unit, but it is centralizing corporate functions such as marketing, administration, finance, and senior management. Although this does not cut as much cost as combining the software development organizations, it does provide some economies of scale.

• Fourth, deliver all sales and service activities directly. M2M employs a separate direct sales force and services group for each software package in its portfolio. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says the best way to serve the small business market is through resellers and value-added resellers. M2M, in contrast, maintains a small selling team for new sales of each software product, plus a single salesperson to maintain contact with the installed base. On the service side, there is a small team of consultants for each software product.

I have my doubts about that last point. Over the past ten years, I've short-listed some of the products that are now in the M2M portfolio, and I've had to explain to clients why the vendor was flying in sales people from the other side of the country. It's not a plus, and it's even more of a problem when the client realizes that if he buys the software he'll be paying major travel expenses for the implementation consultants. Furthermore, I would be concerned that if M2M is successful in ramping up sales of its software products, it will find it difficult to scale up implementation services to assist those new customers. Milay agrees that there are some shortcomings with this model, but feels that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Concerning the need to maintain four separate software organizations, Milay said that over time, they do expect to realize some economies of scale in software development, by transitioning all their products to a service-oriented architecture, using Microsoft's .NET framework. Even though the packages will remain separate, there may be opportunities to share software components, especially where they provide functionality outside of the core niche manufacturing processes that make each package unique.

Milay realizes that continuing to operate each acquisition as a separate business unit may appear to be the most cost-effective approach. But it's important to see the whole picture. "We believe that our industry focus leads to greater market share in each industry niche, which leads to overall revenue for the company," he said. "This more than offsets the less-than-optimal organizational structure of operating each software package as a separate business unit."

Whether Made2Manage will be successful in the long run with its strategy is an open question. It is sticking to a traditional software license model at a time when only a few vendors are able to make money with it. Most of the buzz these days is around offering software as a service and leveraging open source. But, conventional wisdom is often wrong,

If early results are any indication, Made2Manage may have found a different path to success. The firm does not reveal financial results, but Milay assured me that ever since the company started on this road, it has been highly profitable.

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Made2Manage acquiring ETO vendor Encompix
Made2Manage sees bright future in plastics
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