Computerworld has this article on the reincarnation of ASP model. It is amazing how the IT industry has come a full circle - starting with the mainframe oriented central computing model, moving over to the client-server model in the 80s and 90s and returning to a server based model. Not only business applications, if Google's vision is given shape, all computing will be on the server with the devices only acting as a means for interacting and rendering information.
On the ASP note, a leading Indian software company that I know is looking for ASP / Hosting partners for its Business Process Management and Content Management software in USA and Canada. If you or someone you know is interested, please get in touch with me at "sanjay at newgen dot net".
The ASP reincarnation - Computerworld: "Software as a service -- which typically eliminates hefty upfront license costs and requires little or no hardware or IT personnel to install, configure or maintain -- is growing in popularity among large corporations and small businesses alike. Last year's successful public stock offerings by fast-growing providers Salesforce.com Inc. and RightNow Technologies Inc. have shined a spotlight on a software delivery model reminiscent of the buzz surrounding application service providers (ASP) in the late 1990s."
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
New definition of Business Process Management - by Gartner
New definition of BPM by Gartner:
BPM.com - Analyst Briefing: "BPM is a management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. BPM is a structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continuously optimize an organization's activities and processes."
BPM.com - Analyst Briefing: "BPM is a management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. BPM is a structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continuously optimize an organization's activities and processes."
Thursday, August 18, 2005
How organizations approach BPM
I like this article by Terry Schurter. I don't know what the 2nd and 3rd approaches will be - but I would imagine that the tactical approach to BPM is perhaps the one with the highest and easily measurable ROI.
Come to think about it, isn't it obvious that when you tackle a problem that is well defined, where you can put your arms around it, where you can define the parameters on which you would measure the success of the solution, where these parameters would be rather tangible and easily measurable -your chances of success are the highest.
I am looking forward to reading about the next 2 approaches before I comment any further.
How organizations approach BPM
Thursday 18th August 2005
BMP Group
Written By: Terry Schurter, BPMG Chief Analyst
Copyright © 2005 BPM Group
http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=12857&
Come to think about it, isn't it obvious that when you tackle a problem that is well defined, where you can put your arms around it, where you can define the parameters on which you would measure the success of the solution, where these parameters would be rather tangible and easily measurable -your chances of success are the highest.
I am looking forward to reading about the next 2 approaches before I comment any further.
How organizations approach BPM
Thursday 18th August 2005
BMP Group
Written By: Terry Schurter, BPMG Chief Analyst
Copyright © 2005 BPM Group
http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=12857&
Monday, August 08, 2005
InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005
A very insightful article by Paul McDougall at InformationWeek magazine. Paul is the resident Outsourcing expert at InformationWeek and has written many good articles on the subject. Here he writes about the "Next Step" in the evolution of the Indian software industry - the move to selling software products as opposed to only services.
While selling software products bring to the mind the specter of Indian companies getting even higher value addition and hurting US based competitors, the reality is likely to be different. In a mature free-market economy like USA, there is always room for competition and competition brings with it the added advantages of better products at lower cost for the customers and eventually results in an expansion of the market itself. This compensates for ay market share loss for the existing players.
Besides, software product development is becoming increasingly like car manufacturing. The so called "Japanese cars" like Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, etc. may actually have as much local content as cars from GM and Ford. Similarly, to sell products to US customers, Indian software companies are making great investments in establishing a team in US that works closely with potential customers in pre-sales, post-sale implementation, training and on-going support. These teams become the core of knowledge in these enterprises and continues to be expanded in USA to stay close to the customers.
Another advantage with Indian software companies offering products in the USA market is the new opportunites that it offers to US partners to offer more customer friendly business models. For example, document management used to be a very expensive, enterprise technology - where the customer had to invest huge amounts in software license fee and hardware to achieve the benefits. My company - Newgen Software - partnered with a Silicon Valley startup to offer Document Management to Enterprises as a hosted, subscription only business model. We are now trying to offer similar solutions in the Business Process Management area with our US partners focusing on vertical and horizontal segments of the market.
Read more in this article by Paul McDougall...
InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005:
Here's the reference to my company in this article:
"Like other foreign software vendors that saw big opportunities in the United States--SAP among them--Indian companies increasingly want to turn their local successes into a greater U.S. presence. That includes business-process and document-management application vendor Newgen, which says it has a 40% share of the Indian market for software that connects workflows. The company wants to partner with vertical-apps developers in the States to aim its offerings at health care, financial services, and the government. 'People take us more seriously now because many of these enterprises have themselves gone to India for services,' says Sanjay Kalra, VP for business development.
While he's focused mostly on large companies, Kalra believes the low price of the company's various business-process modules, which cover functions such as invoicing and accounts payable, also could appeal to the small- and midsize-business market. 'Even a company with only five or 10 people in accounts payable could break even on our product in a year,' he says. 'They could get rid of three people.' That raises the specter that low-cost automation will join outsourcing as a threat to U.S. jobs--again, thanks to India.
But that may be jumping the gun. While the comfort level with Indian IT expertise has greatly increased, and the cost savings of using lower-priced software is attractive, going up against name-brand players in more established Western markets won't be easy. Newgen offers a lower total cost of ownership, Kalra says, but he concedes that the U.S. market for the software his company sells is mature."
While selling software products bring to the mind the specter of Indian companies getting even higher value addition and hurting US based competitors, the reality is likely to be different. In a mature free-market economy like USA, there is always room for competition and competition brings with it the added advantages of better products at lower cost for the customers and eventually results in an expansion of the market itself. This compensates for ay market share loss for the existing players.
Besides, software product development is becoming increasingly like car manufacturing. The so called "Japanese cars" like Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, etc. may actually have as much local content as cars from GM and Ford. Similarly, to sell products to US customers, Indian software companies are making great investments in establishing a team in US that works closely with potential customers in pre-sales, post-sale implementation, training and on-going support. These teams become the core of knowledge in these enterprises and continues to be expanded in USA to stay close to the customers.
Another advantage with Indian software companies offering products in the USA market is the new opportunites that it offers to US partners to offer more customer friendly business models. For example, document management used to be a very expensive, enterprise technology - where the customer had to invest huge amounts in software license fee and hardware to achieve the benefits. My company - Newgen Software - partnered with a Silicon Valley startup to offer Document Management to Enterprises as a hosted, subscription only business model. We are now trying to offer similar solutions in the Business Process Management area with our US partners focusing on vertical and horizontal segments of the market.
Read more in this article by Paul McDougall...
InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005:
Here's the reference to my company in this article:
"Like other foreign software vendors that saw big opportunities in the United States--SAP among them--Indian companies increasingly want to turn their local successes into a greater U.S. presence. That includes business-process and document-management application vendor Newgen, which says it has a 40% share of the Indian market for software that connects workflows. The company wants to partner with vertical-apps developers in the States to aim its offerings at health care, financial services, and the government. 'People take us more seriously now because many of these enterprises have themselves gone to India for services,' says Sanjay Kalra, VP for business development.
While he's focused mostly on large companies, Kalra believes the low price of the company's various business-process modules, which cover functions such as invoicing and accounts payable, also could appeal to the small- and midsize-business market. 'Even a company with only five or 10 people in accounts payable could break even on our product in a year,' he says. 'They could get rid of three people.' That raises the specter that low-cost automation will join outsourcing as a threat to U.S. jobs--again, thanks to India.
But that may be jumping the gun. While the comfort level with Indian IT expertise has greatly increased, and the cost savings of using lower-priced software is attractive, going up against name-brand players in more established Western markets won't be easy. Newgen offers a lower total cost of ownership, Kalra says, but he concedes that the U.S. market for the software his company sells is mature."
Saturday, August 06, 2005
What is Business Process Management?
Simply put "A business process is the essence of all business..."
Enterprises Focus on Business Process Management: "
Some of the most-elaborate business processes originated in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (there had to be a fairly sophisticated engineering, supply chain and human resources process behind the building of the Pyramids). A business process is the essence of all business, then and now. Automation of business processes can push an industry into a new era (the way Henry Ford's assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry first and the whole society later). A new phenomenon of business process automation is taking place in front of our eyes."
Enterprises Focus on Business Process Management: "
Some of the most-elaborate business processes originated in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (there had to be a fairly sophisticated engineering, supply chain and human resources process behind the building of the Pyramids). A business process is the essence of all business, then and now. Automation of business processes can push an industry into a new era (the way Henry Ford's assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry first and the whole society later). A new phenomenon of business process automation is taking place in front of our eyes."
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Agility in deploying processes - the missing piece
BPM vendors don't often pay much attention to the speed and cost of deployment of a process using their software tools. Most vendors describe in detail the various tools they have as part of the BPM suite - leaving issues like cost, time and ease of deployment to customer's imagination.
A look at some recent BPM implementations in the industry would highlight the fact that BPM implementations are mirroring deployment of Enterprise solutions like ERP, CRM, SCM and others. Not only that, vendors confuse the issues even more by clubbing architectural issues like SOA with a BPM implementation. Thus, often times BPM implementations get bogged down in complex discussions by purists regarding SOA, BPEL, etc. losing sight of key business drivers for implementing BPM solutions in the first instance.
An alternative checklists for users planning to implement BPM solutions should look somewhat like this:
1. Ease of taking an existing process (mix of ad-hoc automation and manual steps) and automating it using the tools and implementation services provided by the BPM solution vendor
2. Total time taken from Process Study to Process Design and Documentation to Development and Testing to Going Live.
3. Total one-time cost of the above - a combination of product license fee / usage based fee and implementation and custom software development services.
4. Ongoing cost of ownership - BPM implies continuous process improvement, which in turn means ongoing effort to improve the process model, user interfaces, integration points with other applications - both inside and outside the enterprise, etc. BPM vendors that can provide a lower ongoing implementation, support and maintenance cost - often leveraging their offshore bases can prove to be a real bargain.
Have you had similar issues implementing BPM in your organizations? Please feel free to comment with your experiences.
A look at some recent BPM implementations in the industry would highlight the fact that BPM implementations are mirroring deployment of Enterprise solutions like ERP, CRM, SCM and others. Not only that, vendors confuse the issues even more by clubbing architectural issues like SOA with a BPM implementation. Thus, often times BPM implementations get bogged down in complex discussions by purists regarding SOA, BPEL, etc. losing sight of key business drivers for implementing BPM solutions in the first instance.
An alternative checklists for users planning to implement BPM solutions should look somewhat like this:
1. Ease of taking an existing process (mix of ad-hoc automation and manual steps) and automating it using the tools and implementation services provided by the BPM solution vendor
2. Total time taken from Process Study to Process Design and Documentation to Development and Testing to Going Live.
3. Total one-time cost of the above - a combination of product license fee / usage based fee and implementation and custom software development services.
4. Ongoing cost of ownership - BPM implies continuous process improvement, which in turn means ongoing effort to improve the process model, user interfaces, integration points with other applications - both inside and outside the enterprise, etc. BPM vendors that can provide a lower ongoing implementation, support and maintenance cost - often leveraging their offshore bases can prove to be a real bargain.
Have you had similar issues implementing BPM in your organizations? Please feel free to comment with your experiences.
Monday, August 01, 2005
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Business Process Management is Under Construction
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Business Process Management is Under Construction:
Continuing in the same vein as the earlier article - " IT Detours on the Road to BPM", thie article postulates that BPM tools are still in their infancy.
"Business Process Management is Under Construction
BPM systems have mastered process integration and automation, but the road to the future, which promises embedded process monitors and sophisticated simulation, has yet to be completed
"
Continuing in the same vein as the earlier article - " IT Detours on the Road to BPM", thie article postulates that BPM tools are still in their infancy.
"Business Process Management is Under Construction
BPM systems have mastered process integration and automation, but the road to the future, which promises embedded process monitors and sophisticated simulation, has yet to be completed
"
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: IT Detours On the Road to BPM
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: IT Detours On the Road to BPM: "BPM implementations aren't all that dissimilar from the summer family vacation. No matter how much time you spend planning the best cross-country route, you end up making detours that cost time and money. In the lab, our summer vacation with BPM software was no exception. More than a few times we exclaimed: 'Are we there yet?'"
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