Goldilocks Memory

Goldilocks Memory

What would the right mix of memory be for an enterprise software vendor? The question is not “are you cloud enough,” but “do you solve the business problem.”

Something new comes along, existing players have trouble adapting to it and fail, new players, scramble to backfill, and select old timers regain the lead. Back to the beginning, but with a twist.

Consider the retail business. Sears and big box retail was about the fastest selling items and shelf turnover in the store. Along came Amazon in books, then all retail. Amazon was about feeding the long tail, providing a broader selection via online catalog store where people could find low turnover items that did not merit shelf space in a store. This was an update to the old Sears catalog using modern technology. Amazon expanded on its catalog by creating technology to suggest additional products and increase sales. Sears adding an e-tail web page while continuing the store business unchanged didn’t work. Sears is bankrupt, and shopping malls lie abandoned in many places. Today we see Walmart and Target catching up on the online catalog store technology, and challenging Amazon to a race to faster home delivery. Retail competition continues, and shoppers benefit through lower prices, more selection, and greater convenience.

Enterprise software is on a parallel path. Big players like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics provided integrated suites of feature rich ERP systems. System Integrators provided services for on premises implementation and customization. Customers experienced extremely large budgets and many years to implement the software. These projects often failed or were not updated as the business changed. Along came Cloud software players.SalesForce, then Workday, NetSuite, and many others offer point solutions that are hosted, so spare their customers the expense of data centers and technical staff while assuring software updates are installed. The on-premises providers responded by acquiring their own cloud offerings, which remain separate from their traditional solutions. As they move to two tracks, which gets the investment? Does any vendor have the vision to flip the challenge of the cloud?

A cookie cutter solution may not exist, although we can draw a clue from retail. Twenty / twenty hindsight lets us ask whether Sears forgot why their catalog worked in the first place when learning the new online world of e-tail. Sears focused on in store sales, the part of their institutional memory that needed revision most. The catalog success was about satisfying customers, the store sales about satisfying analysts. By identifying e-tail choice plus speedy delivery, did Walmart and Target remember just the right mix to succeed? A Goldilocks memory?

What would the right mix of memory be for an enterprise software vendor? The question is not “are you cloud enough,” but “do you solve the business problem.” Success was earned by solving business problems through automation. Cloud success comes through simpler installation and friendlier user interfaces. Customization and ensuring data privacy on multi-tenant databases are continuing challenges for the cloud. Deeper functionality may be required to solve the same business problems as the older systems do. Thus an opportunity for traditional enterprise vendors to challenge the cloud arrivals by learning cloud simplicity while remembering on premises solution depth. The result should be available to customers either on premises or cloud based. Let the customer choose the platform, but be sure they receive the full benefits of your product investment.

That is the path we choose with our AppsInHD technology. It is a win for both our customers and HarrisData. We admire and learned from the cloud delivery, but focus on competing by solving business problems for customers.

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