Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio, recently wrote a superb article on Microsoft’s pathetic attempt at trying to appear that it was entering the SaaS market with it’s Dynamics CRM package. Among other things, Chris pointed out that Microsoft will give its partners a commission for bringing new SaaS customers to Dynamics CRM, but will also give some sort of bonus if those customers switch to on-premise systems. How pathetic is that?
The thing that caught my eye, however, was Chris’s choice of a website to use as an example of a company’s usage of “Microsoft’s attempts to put thin web front ends on on-premise solutions.”
This is Chris’s example of a company that (unwisely, apparently as far as Chris thinks) uses Microsoft’s veiled on-premise solution: Astadia Consulting, a competitor of Appirio’s. I don’t know much about Astadia, but I do know that they are a major player in the Salesforce.com Partner community.
Does this signal some bad blood?
It should be noted that plenty of companies use Outlook Exchange and don’t host it on-premises. Model Metrics, for example, another Salesforce.com Partner, uses Mi8 to host its server data. Sounds fairly SaaS to me…
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I think techno-guys, like Chris, myself, and others, recognize the inelegance of Microsoft’s SaaS implementation architecture. But it’s easy to forget that end-users really don’t care what goes on behind the curtain (ie multi-tenant vs. JIT provisioned VMs) so long as they get what they want, now, for cheap.
Best for partners to be Switzerland as this shakes out IMO :-)
I think you both raise excellent points:
@Mike: You’re absolutely correct that the end-users don’t care (understandably)… until they’re hit in the wallet. Perhaps a full analysis comparing the MSFT models will show substantial economic benefit to the customer, enough so that if the partner wants any business, it will implement the SaaS version, ignoring the decreased commission. Does anyone know of a published case study with hard numbers?
@Jeff: The Appirio educators are among the best in the SFDC-verse. I’m glad you got to learn from Tom Scott. However, though Yankees and Red Sox might drink beer together, the team owners don’t much care for each other. Also, I don’t think Chris had an agenda or wanted to smear Astadia at all–for all we know, it was a good-natured jab or Chris was making a joke. His company is, after all, the top Google-SFDC integrator around, and pretty much is enabling people to go cold-turkey from Outlook!
I attended the Force.com Application Laboratory last November in Atlanta and it was taught by Tom Scott from Appirio. Over half the class was made up of Astadia employees and everyone got along great. Everyone was very friendly and professional. I would have never guessed anything was brewing…
Anyone checking the facts on Astadia would find that Astadia is 100% committed to SaaS. In fact, Astadia’s decision to use Microsoft Exchange was enabled because it was purchased as a service from USA.NET… an independting hosting company. Astadia made the decision to get out of hosted software. Astadia uses hosted GL/ERP, salesforce.com for CRM and a host of other on-demand applications including from Google, where Astadia is also an enterprise partner.
Brent Mellow
EVP/CMO
Astadia
@Brent: Absolutely! Nobody at x2od questions Astadia’s commitment at all. In fact, Astadia has produced super products and has generated high customer satisfaction.
I should have been more clear that it may not have been the most PR-friendly move to include that graphic in Appirio’s official blog. (This puts Astadia in the same boat as Model Metrics, my example above.)
Let’s use this as an opportunity to remind ourselves to be careful what we publish (both in words and images) because it can have far-reaching consequences.