What is Happening?  Saugatuck’s ongoing research with IT and business leaders regarding their business, Cloud, social and other IT-related plans and actions reveals that, while core business priorities remain very similar from the smallest firms to the largest mega-enterprises, significant differences exist based in part on the relative size of firms. These differences shape what, why, how and when firms acquire and use IT of all types and forms, whether suite-based, Cloud-based, traditional, or hybridized.

Our latest global survey research provides us with very useful data regarding how firms of varying size differ in their business goals. The key differences are illustrated in Figure 1, and analyzed in detail in research published this week for Saugatuck CRS clients (1057MKT, Varying Value Needs: SaaS and Business Priorities from SMBs to Mega-Enterprises in 2012, published 25April2012).

The second day of the Dell Annual Analyst Conference began early Wednesday with breakfast at 7, especially after many in our number were treated to a selection of rather excellent tequilas the night before.

It began with Steve Felice, President, Chief Commercial Officer sharing examples of Dell’s innovative culture (including crowd sourcing and bamboo in packaging), Boomi’s role in the OneWorld Alliance partner integration solution, and the emerging markets story, now accounting for 30 percent of revenues and projected to grow very rapidly. Steve Felice then presented three interesting Dell customers, and more about that shortly.

At the Dell Annual Analyst Conference (DAAC), a very corporate look predominates with oceans of blue suiting, dark ties, black shoes and serious demeanors. The setting is the Four Seasons Austin, a lovely and somewhat formal hotel with more subtle luxury than first meets the eye. Dell, too, had more to say than first met the eye.

Earlier today, Saugatuck had an Analyst briefing with Pentaho – a BI / Integration company located in San Francisco, CA and Orlando, Florida. We walked away from the briefing with three key takeaways:

Speed and Cost — Pentaho’s open-source stack, and lightweight framework lend themselves readily to rapid deployment. They say that some of their Large Enterprise clients have gone from purchase to live-rollout in 6-8 weeks. This, along with their substantially lower cost (relative to proprietary approaches), has helped them beat out several larger BI competitors (primarily at a business unit-level) in recent deals.

Earlier today Saugatuck Technology participated in an Analyst briefing with Workday. Find below some key takeaways from the briefing:

Mobility – this is clearly a key area of focus going forward, given accelerating adoption of iPhones and iPads among senior executives / managers in Workday’s client base. Workday identified a significant number of enhancements in support of smart phones and tablets. Among them, they are now beginning to leverage HTML5 for interface development – which will potentially serve as the backbone for cross-platform tablet support (i.e., Apple, Android).