Steve reads his Blog

Dynamics 365 - How about some Solution Quality?

Solutions for either Model-driven PowerApps, or for extensions to First-party Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps share a lot in common. In fact, almost everything in common. What they do not share in common among each other, or themselves, is quality of build. Customers, Partners and ISVs all build Solutions for various reasons, and the quality is wide-ranging. Who uses Solutions? Unless your business requirements happen to fit exactly into the out of the box first-party applications, a circumstance so rare that I have never seen it, Solutions are going to come into play. They serve a few purposes, for Customer deployments, a Solution is where you, or your Partner, should do your customizations to make the product fit your needs. While many will just use the "Customize Button", which will then allow you to make changes to the "Default" Solution, I am not a fan of that. It may add a step or two, but making your customizations in a new Solution of your own will make managing them a lot easier over time. There is another reason for this approach that I will get to in a minute. Solutions are also the primary vehicle for ISVs to get their IP into your environment in a manageable way. Either by directly installing them, or installing them via AppSource. Whether it is a custom vertical solution built directly on the CDS platform, or an addon solution extending the First-party apps, Solutions is how they will get in there. Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder If you were to crack open a typical solution, you would see a lot of stuff. That stuff could have been put together by a highly skilled Business Applications Developer, or a Citizen Developer who is an expert at Googling. Needless to say, the quality of the Solution will vary widely. Just because something works, does not mean it was built well. Working in the App Designer, a citizen developer can't get in too much trouble, Microsoft has abstracted some of the more complex capabilities away. You may build something that does not work, or is not efficient, but you "should" not have to worry too much about breaking anything. Pro Developer While Microsoft came up for a term for the Citizen Developer, I did not hear a term for those of us who are expert at this, so I am going to call us Pro Developers. Pro Developer sounds highfalutin, but actually the quality of build varies just as greatly there. The fact is, that anyone can hang up a shingle and call themselves a Pro Developer... how would you know. Sure there are certifications and competencies, but as many freelancers pointed out in this post, that does not prove expertise. Well Microsoft has couple of new tools to help. PowerApps Solution Checker The PowerApps Solution Checker is a new tool that will be available to both Citizen and Pro developers soon. This tool, when installed on your instance, yes it is a Solution also, will activate some capabilities for you. Once installed, you can go to https://web.powerapps.com, open up your environment, select an "unmanaged" solution that you, or your Partner are working on, and click "Go". That Solution will be run through a battery of tests, resulting in a pretty thorough report about the quality of what was done, along with areas for improvement. Shingle hangers beware. Using this report, you can go back through and modify an unmanaged solution, and keep rechecking it until it is snug as a bug in rug. Nice! This is also why you should consider creating an unmanaged solution for your customizations instead of modifying the default solution. What about ISVs? Sure, ISVs can use this same tool to check their Solutions in development, but ISVs have an even more robust tool at their disposal. The "On Demand Code Analysis" pre-certification tool. This tool is available to ISVs who plan to publish Apps on AppSource and is a more robust version of the PowerApps Solution Checker tool. With it, you can test Managed Solutions. Taming the Wild West For customers, you should ask your Partner to run the PowerApps Solution Checker on everything they do, and provide you with a clean report as part of your exit criteria. It is probably the only way you can know if they customized your environment correctly, or just built a house of cards for you to maintain. For legitimate ISVs, this should be great news! We all know that AppSource is currently loaded with a bunch of crap, hacked together by who knows who. Many Apps in AppSource will not even install today. After a few tries by a customer, the whole of AppSource gets a bad name, and your solution by association. Microsoft plans to fix that. As of now, Solutions that cannot pass the pre-certification tool, cannot be published to AppSource. This should significantly improve the quality of Apps in AppSource. Next step is to run all the existing solutions back through pre-certification and remove all that fail. Which will be many. The good news is that your quality ISV solution will be more easily discovered, now that it is not sitting in a huge pile of crap. Keeping Current To be fair, many of the existing Apps in AppSource worked fine at one time. But with the continuous, and significant upgrades to the platform, they don't work any more. Many fly-by-night ISVs could not be bothered to go and update their apps, or even remove them. That should be rectified soon. I have also been told, that as changes are made to the platform, the pre-certification tool will also be updated, and Apps will have to get "re-certified" on a regular basis. This is a major step in the right direction for AppSource, and may help lead to it becoming what we all hoped it would be. If your AppSource plan was to build shit, and throw it up there just for lead generation... you will need a new plan.

AppSource - 19th time’s the Charm

I am fresh back from the Microsoft Dynamics Partner Advisory Council meetings last week. AppSource, and the whole ISV strategy was a central topic. Unfortunately I cannot share too much because of NDA handcuffs, but I can share some public themes, and my opinions. You have said this before Yes, I am aware that I have written much about AppSource in the past, in fact, exactly 18 posts. In many of those posts I said something along the lines of "Now is the time to get onboard with AppSource", and I am about to say it again. I am familiar with the story of the "Boy who cried Wolf". So how is this time any different? AppSource has come up short I am keenly aware that when it comes to Business Applications, AppSource, and the larger OCP "Sell-With" motion, have not lived up to our expectations... okay, it's been a shit show. ISVs, some possibly at my encouragement, have gone down the path and invested a lot of time and money, for little or no result. So why would I have the balls to even suggest you look at it again? Are ISVs Important? Looking at the primary competition in the business applications space, Salesforce.com, it is hard to argue that ISVs are not key. AppExchange is a major driver for Salesforce's success, just like Google Play is a major driver for Android and the Apple Store is a major drive for iPhones. If your goal is to be a platform company, then ISVs are the only way to ever get there. Microsoft telegraphed their recognition of this not long ago, with the hiring of the now late Ron Huddleston, the purported "architect" of AppExchange. Birth of OCP Ron skipped right over the low-hanging fruit, and instead aimed straight for the top of the tree with the One Commercial Partner program (OCP). Ron was not a guy who wanted to fix things, he wanted to re-invent them. He put all of these vaguely defined, not fully bought into plans, for OCP in motion towards a big fuzzy goal, and then left the company long before the goal was achieved. When Ron departed, the reins of all of those motions were let go, and the meandering began. It's not like ISVs had a clear understanding of what Ron was doing in the first place, he was one of those "Trust me, it will all make sense in the end" kind of guys. Is AppSource and OCP a Failure? If you are a Business Applications ISV, I think it clearly has not been a success yet. But we are not the only players in AppSource or OCP. Azure partners are in there also,  on the other side of the wall. I am not sure who picked up the dropped reins on the Azure team, but they are blowing the lid off of it. Azure ISVs via AppSource or OCP Co-Sell are seeing every bit of the success we had hoped for. So... it is working... just not for us. Why not? Leaderless Up until now, AppSource and OCP efforts for Business Applications have been driven by a smattering of people on the team, each with a very narrow slice of responsibility, and little or no authority to do very much. There was a lot of shoulder shrugging going on. Many of the dropped reigns were laying on the floor. Some of the people on this team have responsibility for recruiting new ISVs to this dysfunctional platform. I assume James Phillips is the one we can credit for reaching out and asking for a "Fixer"... and his wish was granted. Meet "Guggs" Steven Guggenheimer (Guggs), is a 25 year Microsoft veteran, and has been a Corporate Vice President for at least the last 10 of those. For us, he is a "Fixer" who has been brought into the Business Applications group to fix the ISV business for James. I have certainly heard his voice echoed before over the years, like hearing a battle cry from the leader of another group, down the hall from ours, but he was never engaged with our teams. Where I was previously betting on a concept I believed in, now I am shifting my bets to the man who might finally make it happen. Step One As content is being throw at you rapid-fire at these PAC meetings, there is an assumption of NDA. Occasionally, someone will ask if some particular item can be publicly shared. It becomes hard to remember which items were green-lighted for sharing, so I seldom share anything. But one item was clear, and that was around a new high-level taxonomy for ISVs. Up until now, we were all just ISVs, which meant you had to level-set with everyone at MS where you played. We now have three high-level buckets, "Build", "Extend", and "Connect". You may have solutions in more than one, but each solution should mostly fit into one of these 3 buckets. Saying "I am an ISV on the Build track", should shorten your conversations in the near future. So what exactly are these buckets? Build "Build" refers to a new type of ISV, one who builds on the CDS platform, without using any first-party apps. Our RapidStart CRM was the first end-to-end solution built on the "Build" track. Needless to say, I am a big believer that this new motion will be huge for Microsoft and ISVs. Extend This is probably one of the largest tracks, and includes ISV solutions that were built to run on top of one or more of the first-party applications. I think we will see some of these "Extend" solutions, transition over to the "Build" track over time. Connect Connect is for ISVs who have external IP that "connects" with either Build, Extend or first-party solutions, for example:  DocuSign or InsideView. What's coming for ISVs? Like I said, I lost track of what we could and could not share, but there is a lot. Guggs has been given a mission, he has the track record, he has the authority, he has the support, he knows how to navigate Microsoft, and he is in-charge. He seems like a "no-nonsense" kind of guy, who already is grabbing up the loose reins. So is now finally the "real" time to jump in? At the risk of crying wolf again, I say Yes... again.

Dynamics 365 - Consumption vs. Licensing

I was listening to Gus Gonzales' recent podcast on Ten Features that should be removed from Dynamics 365. As usual, Gus makes some great points, but when he was discussing limits, I think he left out a part of the story, that leads to a larger question. Mismatch We were recently engaged in a P2P scenario, where a partner had quoted a fixed price to their customer, to perform some work that they needed our help with. We were engaged by the partner on a hourly basis to perform this work. The project turned out to be significantly more complex than the partner had imagined when they quoted the fixed price. Sure enough, our hourly cost to the partner ultimately exceeded their fixed cost from their customer. This was a cost mismatch that was unfortunate for that partner. One Microsoft While Microsoft aspires to the "One Microsoft" story, they fact is that there is not "one" P&L. Each business group has it's own P&L, which is necessary for Wall Street and many other reasons. When one Business Group uses services from another Business Group, they are not free... they get a bill, just like we do. Business Applications on Azure With version 9 of Dynamics 365, there was a lot of hoopla about the legacy CRM database moving to Azure. It was going to be so much better, more scalable, faster, etc. And it was indeed all of those things. But there was also one new wrinkle. The Business Applications group was now going to receive a bill from the Azure Business Group for all of those spinning servers and storage services. Azure is sold on consumption, but Dynamics is offered on fixed licensing. Sounds familiar to my P2P story. Dynamics 365 Limits I agree with Gus that having a 50 record aggregation limit can occasionally be an issue. While Gus feels his customer might be willing to wait an hour or two for the results of a million record aggregation to be complied, that is going to spin the Azure meters like crazy. That customer with a need for a million record aggregation, is paying Microsoft the same amount per user, as customers who never exceed 50K record aggregations. But Microsoft's COGS could potentially eclipse the revenue that customer is paying. This is not a good spot, it is a mismatch. Match Fix One way to fix the mismatch, would be for Microsoft to change the way they offer Business Applications from Licensing to Consumption. In a consumption based model, there would be no need for any limits, on anything. The customer could spin the servers, and save as much data as they wanted, as long as they were willing to pay for it. License to Consumption Some of you may recall my battles with the Dynamics 365 for Marketing initial Licensing scheme. What I was really lobbying for was a consumption model. We ultimately landed on a workable compromise, which is kind of a quasi-consumption. I recall, one of the obstacles to going to a straight consumption model was "That is not how any of our competitors offer this".  I was of course thinking that was exactly why we should do it. Life on Consumption Let's imagine that you are renting an apartment. You have a fixed monthly rent amount (License), but your electric bill varies (Consumption). While I cannot control my rent amount, I know I can control my electric bill, turn off some lights, adjust thermostat etc. When I go out of town for a month, my electric bill drops way down, but my rent does not. Imagine if instead of paying a fixed monthly rent amount, there were thermal sensors in the apartment, and was only charged rent based on the number of hours someone was in it. I would not pay any rent for my two week family vacation. Would people buy that? BTW, Microsoft IoT would be a great choice for any landlords considering this approach. Who will be first? This is not unique to Microsoft Business Applications. Netflix charges a fixed fee to customers, but pays Amazon on consumption. When everybody started sharing their Netflix login with friends and family, Netflix was getting hammered, so they introduced limits. The opposite is also true. The licensing prices for Microsoft Business Applications are based on some formulas of typical usage. Some users are above the range, but those below, are in effect, subsidizing those above. Same as how skinny people offset the fat people at a Chinese buffet. The risk for the buffet owner is the local chapter of the "Society of Obese People", picking their place to meet. The recent exploration of changing the way Microsoft charges for instances and storage was an attempt to level this out. Microsoft temporarily stepped back from the consumption based storage model, but what if they came back to it... with everything? Bizapps on Consumption Imagine that everything under the Microsoft Business Applications umbrella shifted from licensing to consumption. Use whatever you want, as much as you want, with no limits. No figuring out what licenses users need, instead maybe you stick meters on roles. It would not have to be tied directly to Azure consumption, but some sort of metric(s) that go up and down based on usage. Logins, record views, number of records in an aggregation, etc. If a customer closed the plant for a month for the holidays, their cost would be near zero. When they ramped up activity for back to school, their cost would be higher. A direct relationship of use vs. cost. No one subsidizing anyone else. Could you sell that? But what will it cost? Yup, I hear this argument. "Customers will always want to know exactly how much it will cost!". I think that is an assumption many are making on behalf of all customers, that has proven not to be true for other things. One of the fastest growing services on the planet today is Microsoft Azure, with no fixed cost. Azure sits right next to another service, from Amazon, that also has no fixed cost. Both of those tools have "cost estimators", which is as good an idea as you're going to get. It appears obvious to me, that customers are more interested in paying for what they use... or at least the "skinny" customers. The Consumption Economy is Next If the cloud is, as Gavriella Schuster put it to me recently, the "Fourth Industrial Revolution", then consumption models will be the fuel. By the time your high school age children, have children of their own, this will be the norm.

Dynamics 365 - The Price of Currentcy

Yes, I know, I made up a new term, "Currentcy". I am sure there is a better word for what I am thinking, but I have already typed this one, and changing it at this stage of the game, would simply require too much effort. But probably not as much effort as writing this whole paragraph to justify it, but now I've gone and done that, so there is really no going back now. So let's talk about Currentcy. The other side of the Mirror I have been spouting off quite a bit lately, about the evolution of Microsoft Business Applications, and partners needing to get up-to-speed. No small topic to be sure, and one that will be crucial to Microsoft's success with growing our mutual customer base. What I have not spoken about as much, is the view of all of this massive "change", from the existing customers standpoint. It seems they are not nearly as excited as we are. Congratulations! You've been force upgraded from Hamburger to Lobster! But I'm allergic to shellfish! The concept of keeping instances current, and ultimately everyone on the same version, has clear value to Microsoft and its Partners. With the rapid advancement of the platform, supporting old versions is just not an area where any of us wants to invest our precious time and resources. I mean, we're in a damn race here... against... well... everybody. For new customers, the "story" looks pretty amazing, for existing customers... not so much. I feel the earth move under my feet When Microsoft launched Dynamics CRM Online back in 2011, a fair number of customers jumped on the bandwagon. The growth trajectory has been pretty steady since. Customers paid us, and other partners, a lot of money to customize their instances to fit their needs over the years. But I don't know that enough of them grasped the difference between on-premise vs. SaaS, beyond the subscription vs. perpetual cost aspects. I don't think they fully appreciated what "out of their control" means. Many customers invested large sums of money, building mission critical applications, on top of a tectonic plate. This is not a Microsoft issue, it is a SaaS issue, and the entire world is racing to SaaS as fast as they can. Businesses today, will need to have flexible knees. Buyer's Remorse You know that feeling you get, when you see the new model of your 3 year-old car, at a stoplight? Wow! They completely redesigned it! It looks so modern; faster and more powerful, yet with better gas mileage, and the new tech they added is incredible. Suddenly looking back at your car, it seems like a piece of shit, even though you were perfectly happy with it.... yesterday! That's it, I'm trading it in on a new one. But wait a minute, I am upside-down on mine... damn, I'm stuck. Maybe in a year or two... This is where a segment of on-premise customers are sitting today. They are envious of the features, but have not yet recovered their prior investments. It takes a pretty confident person to march into their bosses office and ask for more money, when they said "This is all we will ever need" the last time they asked. Just Stay On-Premise? That is certainly an option, and one that many are electing apparently. You already own the software, it's functioning adequately for your business, and you spent a buttload of money getting it the way you want... so why are Microsoft and your partner hammering you to move to the cloud all the time? Is there really a compelling reason? A reason that is compelling enough to jump from the static world of on-premise, to the continuous motion word of SaaS? It depends. Don't you hate when people say that? You just want a black and white, yes or no answer, but instead you get an "It Depends". Maybe we should review the pros of each, which also are mostly the cons of the other. Pro On-Premise You own the software, unless you also purchased Software Assurance, your ongoing cost to Microsoft is zippo. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. After all the pain and expense of getting it exactly "right" for your organization, the system is finally running like a well-oiled machine, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. There is a person, or persons, who are being paid to keep that system humming, and they have job security. If something goes haywire, you have direct access to the database as an option to fix it. You can write SSRS reports using SQL, since you can access it directly You finally got all of your finicky integrations working. You can utilize a large amount of cheap additional storage. Its works fast, even with lousy, or no internet connection. You can continue to use the "Classic UI" indefinitely. Some third-party solutions you depend on don't have a SaaS version. Plus 50 more reasons that are unique to you. Pro SaaS All future development of any consequence by Microsoft, will be on the SaaS products. You are not "Frozen in Time". Scale up and down as needed without buying infrastructure that sits idle. Servers will always be patched as soon as possible, meaning the security will be at least as good as on-premise and probably a lot better. Disaster Recovery is baked in. Create Customer, Partner or Community facing web portals. Consistent and known back-end, to simplify partner development and support. Advanced AI capabilities and Relationship Insights Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Field Service and Project Service Automation capabilities. Access to the full suite of Citizen Developer "Power Platform" tools, so you are not completely hostage to your partner, or the one person on your staff who built everything. Never have to Upgrade again... Period. Microsoft support has full telemetry on your SaaS instances allowing then to more quickly fix your issues. The same telemetry allows Microsoft to fix issues before you are even aware of them. Depending on your size, Microsoft will foot the bill to move your ass over. Plus 50 more reasons that are unique to you. I have to give credit to several MVPs who helped me flesh out the above lists, Nick Doelman, Mike Ochs, Aiden Kaskela, Joel Lindstrom and Andrew Butenko. The Price of Currentcy Back to the topic of this post, as I think about it, there is obviously a cost to keeping current, but there is also a cost to not keeping current. Some of these costs have nothing to do with Microsoft, but rather are specific to your own industry, competition or customer expectations. For example, let's say that you and your primary competitor, are both using Dynamics on-premise. You hear through the grapevine, that your competitor is moving to the SaaS version. Would that concern you? I would venture to guess that your on-premise system aligns to the description often provided by the leader of the Dynamics Engineering team, James Phillips, as a "Forms over Data, reporting system". As long as your competition was limited to the same capabilities, no problem. But what if they add everything under the Pro SaaS column above to their arsenal? Uhoh! Maybe you want to explore doing this first! Let's assume you are on the SaaS version... and for those that aren't, this will be a peek at what they get to deal with. Updates every six months. That sounds scary as hell! It is scary, and it is bumpy, but getting less so with each update. Updates bring new capabilities, and if you are on-premise you might not know what those are, but you don't necessarily have to activate them immediately. In theory, new "potentially disruptive" features and capabilities are off by default, so you should not have to worry about your users running around like the house is on fire every six months. I say "in theory", because some things will not be off by default, or they won't stay off indefinitely. Updates are probably the biggest issue that we all need to worry about. They will add some angst to your life every six months, even if they go perfectly smoothly. If they don't, then you will find yourself scrambling for a little while grabbing the loose wires and reconnecting them. You should also prepare to be frustrated, when Microsoft makes available a robust new feature in an update, that you just paid dearly to have custom developed. Maybe you can ask your developer for a refund. The real price of currentcy, is "Change Management", a term that seems to have risen in prominence with the SaaS revolution. In the on-premise world, it reared its head every several years, or for some customers, once a decade. In the SaaS world it is now a minimum every six months, and maybe more often than that. "Change Management" is a bitch. The biggest appeal to moving to SaaS, are the promised gains in productivity, efficiency, engagement, analytics, etc., but none of those are automatically "realized", they are just made "available". In fact, Change Management is such a big topic, I think I'll save it for another post.  

Power Platform ISV - Inception to Disruption

Some of you may know, that one of several things I am involved with, is an ISV Consulting Collaborative called Power ISV. Together with four other ISV-focused Business Applications MVPs, we are helping existing ISVs to modernize, new ISVs get started, and guiding ISVs on other platforms over to the Microsoft Cloud. We also want to reverse the adage, "Those that can't do, Teach", into "Those that are doing it, Teach". Imagine, if you will Looking around the Microsoft ISV space today, and specifically looking at AppSource, there seems to be a lack of imagination. It feels like the "inspiration" for many ISV solutions, is seeing existing ISV solutions, leading to either very similar ISV solutions being built, or ones with minimal advancement of an existing idea. Looking around AppSource you will see a lot of "copies" of similar things, and frankly most of those "things" are for solving simple problems. Don't get me wrong, we all appreciate a nicely built widget. But are those really going to get us to "empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more"? Achieving More How does one actually "achieve more" with technology? It is not simply being able to respond to emails twice as fast... a typing class solves that. Replacing paper processes with digital ones? Yeah, that would put you in position to achieve more. Being able to collaborate with my team or customers better? Sure, but are we not already burnt out on the whole collaboration "Kumbaya" theme. I think "Achieving More" was a great goal at the time it was stated, and probably tied nicely into the Office 365 push at the time, but now what? Building a Toolbox As I look at what Microsoft has been doing in recent years, particularly around the Azure and Business Applications space, they seem to have spent a great deal of effort creating new technologies. Like IoT, AI, ML, [Insert Acronym Here], etc. The palette of capabilities has grown fast. Some ISVs have embraced parts of this new palette, but many are either oblivious, or just... uninspired. I understand, that if you have your own technology, your focus is going to be on plugging that into the Microsoft machine. But where is the disruption? What is Disruption? Maybe you have built a disruptive technology externally, and your goal is simply to bring your disruptive force to a broader base by moving it to the Microsoft engine. I am waiting to see the disruption being borne out of the Microsoft platform. Microsoft has been disruptive in the way they are providing, and growing the tools, but I am looking for the Uber, and so is Microsoft. Microsoft won't build the next Uber, but they have built all of the tools necessary for an ISV to build it. Disruption is all around us. Home Depot disrupted the hardware industry, but that was not so much a technological disruption, as it was a scale and distribution disruption. Uber is probably one of the best known "Technology-driven" disruptions. An industry, that was over 100 years old, was turned upside-down... by an app. Can you make a Unicorn? From a pure technology only standpoint, it is hard to top Uber. Uber was not built on Microsoft technologies, but today, it could have been, and probably at a fraction of the time and cost that Uber has invested. When you break it down into its parts... it's a freaking mobile App! It incorporates a bunch of things we already know, GPS, Ratings, Matching, eCommerce, etc. All parts, and many more, that are available to any of us in Microsoft's Cloud portfolio. But it is not about the parts. It was about that day in the cab, when some guy thought: "This sucks ass". Inception to Disruption For any of us, several times a week, we engage with something that Sucks. Sure, maybe it is the way that Dynamics 365 deals with some thing, that inspires you to create a widget. That is not disruptive, that is convenience. Clearly, most of us will aspire to the convenience, and there is nothing wrong with that, you might even make a few bucks. But a few of you, have it within you to not only recognize an opportunity to truly disrupt, but see the actual path through the vast Microsoft toolbox "illuminated". Walk the Talk So the team at Power ISV, is going to attempt to "Practice what we Preach", and journey down the "Inception to Disruption" path, utilizing nothing but the Microsoft Cloud toolbox. I can't share the "idea" just yet as we are still wrapping our heads around it, but I can tell you the current experience Sucks. We will be chronicling every step of our journey, as we seek to create an "Inception to Disruption" roadmap. "What's Next" indeed! Shining the Spotlight You can learn more about Power ISV here, but in case you don't get to it, I wanted to highlight the MVPs who are part of the team. Myself of course, as well as Mark Smith, David Yack, Scott Durow and George Doubinski. Another thing we will be thoroughly testing, is the ability of a bunch of "know-it-alls" to work together as a team. That may prove the biggest hurdle.  

Steve chats with Charles Lamanna

In this episode of "Steve has a Chat", I sneak up on Charles Lamanna, General Manager of the Application Platform at Microsoft. I called him "out of the blue" at the end of his day, and we chatted about a bunch of things, including the new Open Data Initiative, Licensing, PowerApps, Team Member, ISVs and more. Enjoy!

Microsoft & Salesforce.com - The 800-Pound Gorilla vs. the Elephant in the Room

The photo with this post was from a short-lived marriage that I called the "Can't we all just get along" phase in the Microsoft/Salesforce relationship. This love fest came to an abrupt end when Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, in spite of vehement efforts by Salesforce to block it, leading to irreconcilable differences and a hasty divorce. Since then the two behemoths have been circling and sizing each other up in the ring. David vs. Goliath? In the cloud business applications space, Salesforce.com is sitting somewhere around a 20% market share, Microsoft sits around 4%. You have to wonder why Microsoft came up as a subject so many times at Salesforce's just concluded Dreamforce conference. You might think that it would be better if Salesforce co-CEOs Benioff and Block, just ignored Microsoft and continued to marginalize their efforts. But Microsoft is not "Joe's Software Company", they're freaking Microsoft! In the grander landscape, according the Forbes list of the worlds largest companies, Microsoft is #20, and Salesforce comes in at #856! Even if you have a 5x larger share of a particular area, you simply can't dismiss a competitor who is almost 43 times your size. If Salesforce is the 800-pound Gorilla in Business Applications, Microsoft is the 34,000-pound Elephant who is starting to pluck bananas off their tree. So who is the David, and who is the Goliath here? Nadella is Salesforce's Kryptonite Before Satya Nadella took over the helm at Microsoft, Salesforce really didn't have much to worry about. Nadella's predecessor was more interested in buying things like mobile phone companies, and the Dynamics business group was just one of many things in the stable. While it is true that Balmer sparked the charge to the cloud for Microsoft, it was Nadella who poured the gas on the fire. Guess what? Nadella was previously a Business Applications guy! Uhoh. Since the day Nadella took over, Dynamics started becoming a part of the conversation at Microsoft. He replaced the boobs that were running Dynamics with a proven leader, James Phillips. Today, Dynamics 365, and the more recent "Power Platform", is part of every conversation that Microsoft has with customers. We're Number 1, We're Number 1! Sure, Salesforce can crow today. I too am number 1. I am the world's most successful, and most read, blogger... "who is named Steve Mordue". Salesforce's worst nightmare is Microsoft actually focusing on their space. Remember Lotus 123, or Word Perfect, they too were number one, until Microsoft decided they wanted to be there. Salesforce has stepped up the rhetoric lately, particular at their DreamForce conference with slides like this one presented to investors: An interesting claim... "Most complete portfolio in the industry". It's looks to me, like in addition to ignoring Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing, and Microsoft's Industry focus, they also conveniently left off a few dozen columns. We've seen this before Amazon (Forbes #53) also landed in Nadella's crosshairs, and based on all of the trajectories I have seen, it looks like Microsoft may overtake them in the not too distant future. Salesforce has reason to be concerned. If #20 can cause so much disruption for #53, imagine what they could do to #856! And now the turret is swiveling around towards them. There is seldom a public comment made by Nadella today, that does not have Business Applications mentioned within it. The Snipers While Nadella has elevated Microsoft Business Applications in the grand scheme, the people that Salesforce needs to be the most worried about, are actually James Phillips and Alysa Taylor. These are the two snipers on the hill overlooking the Salesforce camp, and Nadella has authorized unlimited rounds for their rifles. After he took over and got the Azure pathway cleared, Nadella turned to Business Applications. As I said above, one of the first things he did was get rid of bumbling leadership, and install these snipers. Phillips has methodically cleared out all of the Keystone Cops under the prior regime, many of which are now at Salesforce. It is kind of ironic that Salesforce eagerly snapped up, and put into leadership positions, many of the people that Phillips determined were "not good enough". Phillips inherited a losing hand, but instead of playing it out, he just threw the cards away. Planned Burning Let's face it, before the Nadella/Phillips/Taylor focus, Salesforce had little to be concerned about from Dynamics. It was more like a fly that occasionally needed swatting. The Dynamics BG looked a little schizophrenic, a bunch of random smoldering piles seemingly lit by tossing matches willy-nilly in hopes of something catching fire. Phillips and Taylor poured water on a bunch of these, and then strategically injected gas onto others. In addition, with a specific plan in hand, they lit whole new fires, and have been methodically concentrating all of this raging flame into a blowtorch aimed directly at Salesforce. Based on Salesforce's reactions, they clearly feel the heat. Salesforce's Achilles Heel There is no question that Salesforce has great products. There is also no question that for CRM, Salesforce is a better known brand than Dynamics 365. There is also no question that Salesforce has a huge following of loyal fans. But Salesforce has some gaps, and Microsoft is uniquely positioned to fill those gaps in ways that Salesforce could only wish to. For one, the relationship of Business Applications to Productivity Applications. Seriously... Quip? WTF is that? Salesforce's announced integration with Google apps, might have been a big deal, had Office 365 not blew past Google Apps like they were standing still, a few years ago. Einstein? A thrown together pile of first and third-party parts vs. Azure? Microsoft "owns" AI today, and their Business Applications are being plugged directly into that "universe". The Secret Share One of the segments of the Business Applications market that Salesforce should also worry about, is the on-premise market. Obviously they understand the opportunity, hence their acquisition of Mulesoft. But when you look across the on-premise market for I.T. all up, Microsoft is the far and away dominant player. Where Salesforce has Cloud Business Applications loyalty, Microsoft has decades long loyalty in the on-premises business. Microsoft continues to shift this legacy cache of on-premise customers into their cloud, led by Azure and Office 365. There are also a significant number of legacy Dynamics deployments in many of these on-premise troves. Probably not enough to eclipse Salesforce's 20% market share alone, but they will make a significant dent. In almost every one of these cases, Microsoft is in competition with their own legacy, Salesforce is not even in the mix. Keeping up with the Joneses Facing the market leader, Microsoft has spent a lot of time "catching up" to Salesforce. But we are seeing a shift to tit-for-tat. Einstein was in direct response to Azure AI by Salesforce. Microsoft Learn is a direct response to Salesforce's Trailhead. Salesforce's "Flow" is a direct reaction to Microsoft's leading the charge for "Citizen Developers". Both companies are looking for opportunities to launch the "next big thing", but given the huge palette that Microsoft has to work with, they could soon be the ones that Salesforce spends all of their effort catching up to.

How I.T. can create value exceeding their expense

In a recent post, I referenced this post that I wrote 6 years ago. I thought I would go back and record it, unedited. Let me know if you agree that it sadly still applies to many companies even today. Originally published - May 22, 2012   Let's face it, I.T. is a big expense. As a former CEO of several organizations, I can tell you looking at the I.T. expense is a head shaker. Chalked up as a "cost of doing business" today, I.T. is a significant line item on just about any company's budget. It is also one of those items that is considered "non-revenue generating", like rent or accounting fees. And, like many CEO's, when you question the I.T. expense, you will get a litany of reasons that you won't understand that all sum up with the idea that the world will end if you cut a penny of it. As a former CEO, I can tell you, CEO's do not like I.T.. We do not like anything we feel hostage to. We do not like any "non-revenue generating" expenses. Just look at our face at the next budget meeting. Don't get me wrong, we don't mind spending money. When the Marketing Director proposes a new $20K initiative to bring in more customers, we will smile; but when the I.T. Director proposes a new $20K Exchange Server, just so we can continue to have email the same as before, we will frown. As an I.T. Director or Manager, you already know this; if you are not okay with this, read on. We speak with a lot of folks in the I.T. Community about "Cloud"; in particular, Software as a Service or "SaaS". Their reactions have certainly run the gamut, and by now I can usually tell, within about 30 seconds, where they are going to come down on incorporating Cloud into their organization. If the first words out of their mouth is "security", then I know that they have either latched onto this red herring for job preservation or they are uninformed. Neither of which is good for us. For one thing, much of what is perceived as "Cloud", is not Cloud, as I outlined in this post. For the uninformed, we can provide information, but as we are providing it, I find myself wondering "why don't you already know this stuff?". A smaller group, are the Job Preservationists, but the irony is that they are even more uninformed than the uninformed. Most I.T. Managers are smart people, but maybe a little paranoid. This is not their fault. As I said above, their function has often been viewed as "a necessary evil", and they have adapted to that role. The concept of "Value Creation" has never been a part of their department's agenda, but I think it's about time it was added. I am sure some I.T. Managers reading this are thinking "You are full of crap Steve, I create value everyday". No, you don't. "Without me, our whole organization would grind to a halt!" Yes, and my car would grind to a halt if it ran out of gas, but the gas does not create value, it is an expense required for me to go somewhere so that I can create value.  Let's face it, most of I.T. today is simply gas. You provide the basic functions, like email, so the sales guy can create value. This is why you get dissappointed if the CEO does not congratulate you on that speedy installation of that new server blade. To the CEO, it's gas, we only notice if we run out; but you will definately hear from us then. So, is I.T. a thankless job? Yes, it usually is. Can that be changed? Maybe... if you can look at role differently, and consider breaking out of your I.T. bubble. The tools exist today for I.T. to be a value creator. This is new. So how can you move from where you are in your organization, to where you want to be: "A Hero"? The first step is to understand the concept of "Value Creation"... in your CEO's terms. You have to get past the idea, if you have it, that "Cloud will put you out of a job" or "diminish your role" as neither of these are true. In fact, far from it. In order to be able to create value for your organization you need to free up some bandwidth. The best place to start is to look at some of what you are doing today that is not creating value. This is not easy, as you have to view this from the CEO's perspective. For example, whatever part of your day you are spending on your Exchange server, updating, adding or deleting users, backing up mailboxes, etc. may well seem important to you, but in your CEO's eyes, this is gas. Whatever time you are spending running around to user computers, applying updates, removing viruses, swapping hard-drives, etc....Gas. You get the idea. So we have identified some areas where we are acting as a Gas Station Attendant (I know they don't exist anymore). Let's throw our head back and think about what we could do if we had that time back. With our new found time, we might stop by the Marketing Director's office and say "What technologies would make your job more effective?". After their initial shock of having maybe met you for the first time, and realizing that this might be the first time an I.T. person asked them a question like that, they will probably say something like "As a matter of fact, I have some ideas". Implementing initiatives that make the marketing of your organization's producst or services is absolutely Value Creating in the eyes of any CEO. You get the concept, your opportunities to create value are many, but we skipped over how you get out of the Gas Attendant role. This is where today's cloud and software as a service is your best friend. Let's explore one example, one that can free up a lot of Gas Attending: Microsoft's Office 365. What if you could snap your fingers and your exchange server dissappeared? While we're at it, there goes the SharePoint Server as well. Oh, and also all the licenses for them. Speaking of licenses, poof, there goes all the Microsoft Office licenses... vanished. And perfect timing too as you were looking at a nasty budget meeting wherein you were going to need to relay that Office is overdue for an expensive upgrade. While we may not be creating value yet, we are reducing the "Non-Revenue Generating" expense of our department... that puts a smile on a CEO's face also. "But Steve", you say, "Office 365 isn't free". Nope, it is going to cost your organization somewhere between $2 and $20 per month per user (depending on needs). "But won't that eclipse my on-premise costs over time?" Nope, for a couple of reasons. First, we moved a Capital Expense over to an Operating Expense, you just made the CFO smile, if you don't know why, go ask him/her. Second, these cloud guys are smart; they have priced their subscriptions in such a way that by the time you get anywhere close to having paid as much as an on-premise option, your on-premise option needs an expensive update. Make no mistake, even Microsoft wants you in the cloud, and they have priced it to be a no-brainer. Take a look at the Forrester Research Study commissioned by Microsoft comparing the cost of Office 365 with on-premise solutions... including mostly their own on-premise stuff. Microsoft offers a free 30 day trial of Office 365 so you can check it out. The trial includes the fully featured product with 25 users so you can put it to the test. So, put down that gas nozzle and start creating value for your company!

The Changing Role of the Microsoft Business Applications Partner

Six years ago, I wrote a post that was directed at IT Directors/Managers, about the need for them to re-imagine their roles in the face of the then rapidly growing cloud thing. Today, the role that needs to be re-imagined is that of Microsoft Business Applications Partner. Between Microsoft and the Citizen Developer, the space previously occupied by the Partner is getting narrower. You can't Get There from Here Not that long ago, if you wanted to bring Business Applications into your organization, a significant part of your budget planning had to include a pretty big chunk for an Implementation Partner. It did not matter whether it was Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce.com, a large bucket of cash had to be allocated. For most implementation partners, this was their entire business model. It has been a great model... for years... for the partner that is. But not so great for customers who had to pay for it, or Microsoft who got no vig on it. Back in 2016, I wrote another post titled The End of the Microsoft Partner, which may have been a little early, but it is coming to fruition now. The End is Near Two days ago I was driving somewhere and stopped at an intersection. A well-dressed man, who looked like a banker, was waiting at the crosswalk. When the "Walk" sign lit, he walked across in front of my car, and as he reached the middle of my hood, he stopped, pulled out a piece of paper from his suit jacket pocket, unfolded it, and held it up to me. It said "The End is Near". After a few seconds he folded it back up, put it back in his pocket and continued on. I was not sure if the massage was for me, or all of humanity, but I checked my seat belt anyway. As I was driving away I found myself thinking about a call I had with one of our customers last Thursday. It's About Bob Bob (not his real name) is one of our Dynamics 365 customers. Bob is pretty technically savvy, but was quick to say that he was not very familiar with Dynamics. He also said that, while he wanted to learn more, he had a pretty full plate of other responsibilities at his mid-sized company. Bob also felt his company was an excellent candidate for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing, and that he wanted to jump all over that with us, as well as build out his entire sales process. Most partners would probably be drooling at the Project Services opportunity that this appeared to present. The engagement seemed to be ramping up rather slowly, we built a basic custom entity, after which things quieted down, with just the occasional questions here and there. Then suddenly, it seemed like all-hands-on-deck with the Marketing App. Last week he wanted to have a call with me to show me "Something he had been working" on, just to see if he was on the right track. Over the years, I have had similar calls, and so have learned to not chuckle, when a customer shows me their feeble efforts, so I felt I was prepared. I was not prepared. Bob the Builder I joined the call at the appointed time with Bob, and made him a presenter. He wanted to show me an "App" that he was working on for a segment of his sales team, to get my thoughts. Of course my first thought was, "Why are you building it instead of us". Until I saw it. Bob, who did not know Dynamics 365, and had a full plate, was able in his spare time, to build an app that would rival any I have seen most partners do. Sure, there were a few areas for minor improvement, but truly minor. My role was limited to pointing out a few ideas, that I am sure Bob will go explore on his own. Bob's Limits... for now Bob ended up needing more help with the Dynamics 365 for Marketing application, but in reality, most of the areas where he needed help, we also needed help. Mainly, as one of the first customers of this new application, we were both working through some V1 issues. Issues that were being addressed and eliminated as we went. Bob probably would not have even needed our help with that, if he were starting in October. or at least not much. Bob is Coming As I said, our Bob is pretty tech savvy, but not unique. There are a lot of Bob's out there in our customer organizations. Meanwhile, Microsoft is continuing to lower the barriers to entry, and the level of tech savviness to accomplish what Bob is doing, will continue to come down. What will be the partner role in a world full of Bobs? The Answer To be honest, the answers are hard to come by here. It is obvious that partners will need to reinvent themselves, but into what? How long before we are over-run by Bobs? Who knows, but probably quicker than you are hoping. It seems partners will need to go even deeper down the rabbit hole of either the super complicated shit, or the brand new shit, because what was too complicated yesterday, is no longer.

Dynamics 365 for Marketing - Steve chats with Thomas

So I have actually been having a little fun with the "Steve Reads his Post Podcast", and decided to see if I might take it further. But I didn't want it to be "just another podcast". I thought it might be fun to just call somebody out-of-the-blue with the record button on, and see where it goes. It could be a disaster! You tell me. For my first of this type of podcast, I decided to call Thomas Manders, CEO of Coffee+Dunn, who we are partnering with on Dynamics 365 for Marketing. I knew Thomas would be a good sport.