Author: Mike West In this Strategic Perspective, we discuss a number of issues that make up the Cloud pricing conundrum with the intention of unraveling some of its complexity. We consider underlying costs, the elements of Cloud pricing, the value metric ...

Author: Bill McNee As 2012 marches to a close, a new focus on the enterprise Finance function is clearly taking place – with a range of viable and powerful Cloud-based solutions coming to market in support of upper-mid and large enterprises. As our ong ...

Author: Brian Dooley    While much of the world has labored beneath a recession that has drained investment enthusiasm, the Chinese mobile and Cloud sectors are moving forward on the back of steady, if diminished, economic growth. Although ...

Author: Bruce Guptill On August 15 2012, Saugatuck looked briefly at the wide and deep range of organizational, strategic, technological and market changes announced and confirmed by SMB business management software vendor Sage North America. This Strate ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck research indicates the beginning of a shift from on-premises software through a hybridized, Cloud+on-premises phase, toward a pure-play Cloud acquisition and deployment model within the next four years. This Strategic Pers ...

Authors: Brian Dooley and Bruce Guptill Regional differences are critical in determining market requirements for the relative value of technologies and services, as well as in predicting significant trends in how Cloud-based businesses will develop. Saug ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Years of research regarding SaaS adoption plans, adoption and usage reinforce a critical pattern: Relative levels of SaaS business application adoption and use through the realistically plannable future have become very predictable. ...

Authors: Brian Dooley and Bruce Guptill Acquisition of SaaS and other Cloud-based IT and business services has always differed across the globe, due to factors such as relative market maturity, average business size, and state of the economy. We first p ...

Author: Bill McNee Earlier this quarter, Saugatuck began publishing the results of a deep-dive interview program conducted with large-enterprise CIOs and CTOs, with a focus on gathering first-person insights into the impact that Cloud is having on IT str ...

Author: Mike West In September 2008, we introduced the Saugatuck Cloud EcoStack™, a model describing five functional layers of the Cloud and their interrelations: Level 4 - Cloud Business Services and Operations Level 3 - Cloud Business Solutions Le ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck’s just-completed 2012 global survey of SaaS/Cloud business solution adoption and use shows several patterns that indicate how the acquisition, use, and management of SaaS (and other Cloud-based IT services) is changing, ba ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Alex Bakker, Charlie Burns, Mike West, Bill McNee This document represents a comprehensive review and analysis of data gathered via Saugatuck‘s February 2012 global web survey of enterprise executives regarding SaaS/Cloud Busine ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck’s latest global survey of executives and managers (see Note 1) shows very clearly that enterprises worldwide are still working their way through recovery mode, emphasizing improvement in operations, market presence, and cu ...

Author: Bruce Guptill The completion of Saugatuck’s latest global survey of SaaS/Cloud business solution adoption drives a re-examination and re-articulation of Saugatuck’s SaaS research agenda. This Strategic Perspective lays out that agenda throughout ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Two years ago, Saugatuck published its seminal report on critical management strategies for the emerging Cloud IT and Cloud Business era. Our net position: Anyone with any responsibility for IT and business needs to learn how to lea ...

Author: Bill McNee On Thursday, December 15, 2011, salesforce.com announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Rypple, an emerging Cloud-based provider of “social performance management” solutions – with a plan to rebrand the solution “ ...

Authors: Bill McNee, Bruce Guptill, Mike West On Saturday, December 3, 2011, SAP announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion, a roughly 10X multiple to estimated calendar year 2011 revenues (and 8X ...

Author: Mike West Integration redefines the meaning and the value of solutions and platforms in the Cloud. Instead of a standalone set of Cloud resources, integration enables both economy and synergy, innovation and reach, as solutions and technologies l ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Ongoing Saugatuck interview programs with independent software vendors (ISVs) worldwide indicate that the vast majority are moving toward a future in Cloud, but not necessarily a Cloud future. Uncertainty about Cloud adoption and us ...

Author: Mike West In June of this year we reached out to Aria, MetraTech, Monexa, RevX, Vindicia, and Zuora, all Cloud billing and payments providers we first assessed in depth in November 2009. We asked three brief questions designed to elicit from the ...

Author: Charlie Burns Four years ago, Saugatuck developed one of the first taxonomies for Cloud-based platforms and providers. Massive growth and market changes since then necessitate a review and recasting of some key types. This Strategic Perspective u ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Two IT provider announcements during the past week highlight the substantial types and levels of uncertainty and risk that IT executives must manage as they guide their enterprises toward and into Cloud IT and Cloud Business. Speci ...

Authors: Lisa Pierce and Bruce Guptill As companies slowly emerge from the recession, their contact centers are experiencing a surge in demand for services. However, few contact centers have all the necessary state-of-the-art equipment completely in plac ...

Authors: Brian Dooley and Bruce Guptill Advanced Analytics provides high-level data modeling capabilities that yield strategic benefits. Of particular importance today are Big Data applications including predictive analysis and customer profiling. There ...

Authors: Bill McNee and Bruce Guptill As a follow-up to Saugatuck’ Cloud Business Summit conference, held on  May 10th in New York City, Saugatuck’s Bill McNee and Bruce Guptill recently caught up with James Powell, CTO of Thomson Reuters as part of ...

Authors: Brian Dooley and Bruce Guptill Advanced Analytics provides high-level data modeling capabilities that yield strategic benefits. Of particular importance today are “Big Data” applications, including predictive analysis and customer profiling. The ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Four world-class CIOs and CTOs shared one critical point of view at Saugatuck’s May 2011 Cloud Business Summit: Forty years of IT experience and practice is basically broken, and IT and business must transform together if they are t ...

Author: Brian Dooley Advanced Analytics provides high-level data modeling capabilities that yield strategic benefits. Of particular importance today are predictive analysis and customer profiling. There are also special analytic requirements in a variety ...

Authors: Bill McNee and Mike West Cloud adoption among large enterprises continues to strengthen ahead of previous expectations, as businesses accelerate their investments in Cloud technologies and business solutions while reshaping themselves in the wak ...

Authors: Bill McNee and Mike West As part of our ongoing Executive Insights research program, Saugatuck’s Bill McNee and Mike West recently caught up with John Schloff, VP Global Strategy at Pitney Bowes. Here Schloff offer a range of insightful views re ...

Authors: Bill McNee and Mike West As part of our ongoing Executive Insights research program, Saugatuck’s Bill McNee and Mike West recently caught up with John Schloff, VP Global Strategy at Pitney Bowes. Here Schloff offers a range of insightful views r ...

Author: Lee Geishecker Collaborative Commerce is fast becoming a business model which provides an opportunity for organizations to change the way they do business. The Cloud is a key ingredient for the formula for Collaborative Commerce success. This Str ...

Authors: Alex Bakker, Robert McNeill Leading SaaS providers are integrating Social Media functionality into applications to improve workflow and enable collaboration within existing processes. This Strategic Perspective provides an overview of three vend ...

Author: Brian Dooley As SaaS and Cloud solutions become increasingly critical for enterprise operations, Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) is becoming more important. Not only must Cloud solutions be brought into compliance with regulations and govern ...

Author: Mike West As independent system vendor (ISV) migration to the Cloud continues, and as the many benefits of multi-tenancy have become clearer, Cloud platform providers have recently been touting better, faster, cheaper ways for the ISV application ...

Authors: Bill McNee, Mike West, Alex Bakker As part of our ongoing Executive Insights research program, Saugatuck’s Bill McNee and Mike West recently caught up with Mike Wilens, President of Corporate Operations and Technology at Fidelity Investments. He ...

Author: Lee Geishecker Continuing on our theme of evaluating Cloud Business Solutions, this Strategic Perspective furthers this research with a framework that will help buyers evaluate providers and solutions at the intersection of Cloud IT and Business ...

Authors: Bill McNee, Mike West, Alex Bakker As part of our ongoing Executive Insights research program, Saugatuck’s Bill McNee and Mike West recently caught up with Mike Wilens, President of Corporate Operations and Technology at Fidelity Investments. He ...

Author: Mike West In this Strategic Perspective, we introduce a governance approach for managing the risks inherent in transitioning IT to the Cloud. Beginning with the “Cloud Decision,” we examine the four key elements of the Saugatuck Cloud Transition ...

Author: Lee Geishecker While Cloud-based CRM itself is nothing new, we find that many, possibly a majority, of first-time CRM buyers lack core insights to make informed and correct decisions. This Strategic Perspective presents a framework with key, init ...

Authors: Robert McNeill, Lee Geishecker, Bruce Guptill Enterprise software vendor Lawson Software, Inc. said on Friday March 14th that it had received an unsolicited takeover offer from rival midrange application software provider Infor, and Infor’s prim ...

Authors. Brian Dooley and Bruce Guptill Location Analytics is emerging as an important component of BI solutions as BI and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) merge into a new category of Location Intelligence. Location Intelligence (LI) is particular ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Lee Geishcker, Bill McNee According to the IT trade press and much of the analyst community, SAP this week announced a new offering directed against salesforce.com. What really happened is that, on Tuesday 1 March 2011, SAP announ ...

Author: Mike West Broker-Aggregator offerings have become an important route to market for Cloud master brands, for small business SaaS vendors and for telecom providers, system integrators and other Cloud enablers, as channels for delivery of Cloud solu ...

Author: Lee Geishecker Saugatuck’s ongoing research into the progression of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) has yielded a number of insights into the challenges confronting adopters and vendors of Cloud IT. This Strate ...

Author: Lee Geishecker The increasing popularity of consuming, and developing on, Cloud IT has created market opportunities for multiple categories of technologies and services that provide guidance in Cloud selection and assistance in Cloud adoption or ...

Author: Bruce Guptill We should safely assume that the concept of Collaborative IT will shape the development, delivery, acquisition, and use of IT for the foreseeable future. What will the users of this broad range of IT be like, and how will their char ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Several things are happening simultaneously that will change the nature and use of Collaborative IT, from what is considered “collaborative,” to how it is developed and deployed, to business models – including but not limited to ...

Author: Mike West Today’s economic situation continues to favor the Cloud, driven by businesses that are reshaping themselves. The Cloud – including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and Cloud Services – will drive increasing business and IT activity, resulting in hyb ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill and Brian Dooley Analysis of Saugatuck’s most recent global Cloud IT survey results indicate that the Asia-Pacific region is moving aggressively ahead of US and European regions in both adoption plans and deployment of Cloud IT sol ...