Category: Upside updates

Over the next 5 -10 years Upside Research projects that the graying baby boomers and growing senior population will have an important impact on technology manufacturers and technology marketing trends. The implications include:
– While the youth market is always hot for technology companies, over the next few years seniors and baby boomers will be an important technology market. Over the years we’ve seen PC and technology gadget colors go from standard black to shiny white. Now we’ll see technologies go gray, along with our growing senior and baby boom population.
– Manufacturers will be releasing mobile devices with larger screens and easier-to-use buttons. The Apple iPhone is a great example of this.
– For years we’ve seen phones and MP3 players get smaller, but as the population ages, there’ll be an increased need to provide larger and more usable products for the older population.
– We’ve already seen youth-oriented services such as Facebook update their service to include professionals and adults. I believe that we’ll see even more extensions of products and services designed to serve and increasingly large senior and baby boom market. For example, social networking sites are great for kids with time to kill in between classes, but they could be a boon to seniors who want to be sociable but can’t just go hang out at the local 7-11.

Many small businesses operate with a basic IT infrastructure–a number of laptops or PCs working individually, or perhaps strung together as a peer-to-peer network so they can share files from one computer to another, instead of having a single, centralized server.
However, almost every business, no matter how small, can benefit from a server. These days, even small organizations should consider buying a server. They’re incredibly economical, they make it easy to add large amounts of storage space, and make it easy for organizations to back up, secure and organize important files or data.
For small companies, a small investment in an entry-level server will give them a huge step up in their ability to manage their data, increase availability and plan ensure reliability and security. In addition, centralized servers allow companies to more easily support mobile users (through remote access software) and easier file sharing.
A few tips for moving from a peer-to-peer network to a client-server network:
– Look for small business servers that are ready “out of the box.??? They should have a compatible operating system and be easy-to-use. Many companies such as Dell and others are providing preloaded business servers that are ready to roll.
– Don’t over invest. Today’s servers are much more flexible than servers from five years ago. As a business grows it’s easy to add additional storage, new applications or other devices to support changing business needs. Thus, organizations don’t need to worry too much about getting the “wrong??? server. Simply purchase one that is capable of managing the applications and data you have (as well as some room for growth).
– Look for servers that provide built-in security and mobile computing support. Both capabilities are critical for even the smallest organizations these days.

Getting a really good deal in consumer electronics generally means being patient. While technology prices can drop quickly (though not usually as quickly at the Apple iPhone), they frequently drop in cycles.
– For many consumer electronics, including computers, cameras, and music players, January and February are great times to buy. Many manufacturers announce new products at the consumer electronics show in January, and put last year’s models on sale. Retailers also try to clear out unsold holiday stock early in the year, before inventory.
– Over the past few years, I’ve found that many stores offer extremely good deals early in the holiday shopping season—early to mid-November shoppers can actually get some extremely good deals if they’re willing to look through the Sunday ads and get out there early.
– In general, phones are a best buy anywhere from 6-12 months after the first come out. I’ve seen the price on many advanced phones drop by $100 or more after six months. The best shopping strategy is to follow the latest phones your provider releases, learn the initial price, and then check back once a month or once every two months and purchase after the first big price drop.

As anyone who’s gone to a party or movie theater knows, the social impact of the cell phone has been enormous. Cell phones have dramatically altered the social landscape, social etiquette (since when is okay to take a phone call in the middle of a face-to-face conversation?), and social networks.
– Originally, cell phones were just tools. They enabled individuals to make and receive calls when outside their office or home. Today, cell phones have morphed into the hub of an individual’s digital universe. While older consumers still mainly use cell phones for telephone calls, young consumers email, text message, purchase music, take pictures, make videos, watch TV, and surf the web on these all-purpose communication devices.
– Cell phones and mobile digital devices will increasingly shape the fabric, content and form of social interaction for years to come.
– At a macro level, digital devices are enabling market-changing options (digital downloads of videos, music and more), while at the personal level digital devices enable friends and family to share information, pictures, videos, voices at
– Cell phones and digital devices are reshaping every part of our lives—don’t be surprised if you walk into a funeral parlor at some point in the future and are offered digital downloads of pictures, videos or the favorite music of the deceased. From cradle (with instant pictures beaming out to family and relatives) to grave, cell phones are dramatically reshaping our social lives.

On Wednesday, August 1st, another merger was announced in the Business Process Management (BPM) market. Metastorm, a pure-play BPM vendor and one of the early leaders in the BPM market, acquired Proforma Corporation, a vendor of enterprise modeling and business process analysis solutions. The combined company will provide a unified solution that enables organizations to analyze, plan, and execute their enterprise architectures and models. After the acquisition, Metastorm will have roughly 300 employees, more than 2600 customers, and have projected revenue of $70 million for 2007.
Metastorm envisions that the new company will offer three different product lines to its customers, which can be purchased separately or together. Metastorm ProVisionEA will be the re-branded Proforma solution for enterprise architecture, enabling organizations to model their enterprise assets and relationships. Metastorm ProVisionBPA will be the re-branded Business Process Analysis suite from Proforma, offering process modeling, simulation, Six Sigma, and other optimization methods. And, Metastorm BPM is the existing Metastorm Business Process Management suite for lifecycle process management of both human-centric and integration-centric processes.
Metastorm’s goal is to provide the entire interoperable product portfolio by the end of 2007 using Common Interchange Format (CIF) to interoperate. By early 2008, Metastorm plans to have a common meta model and metadata platform for all products.
One of the main catalysts behind this acquisition is Metastorm’s belief that it can deliver more value to its customers if they start to think on a larger scale, moving beyond business process automation to creating an enterprise-wide strategy for business optimization, using BPM as the execution engine for an enterprise architecture. While customers benefit from automating individual processes, and there are many such processes within an organization to automate, Metastorm believes that the real value will come with an enterprise plan for business optimization, of which process automation is one component.
The Upside Uptake
This acquisition accentuates an undercurrent in the BPM market that Upside Research has been watching develop over the past year. As the BPM market continues to mature, there are a number of factors that make it ripe for consolidation. Not only are the initial pure-play vendors looking for ways to further define their value propositions, but large enterprise vendors from other related markets are looking to gain from BPM’s allure. Metastorm’s acquisition is a good example of the types of changes we will see as the BPM market continues to mature.
Since having a process execution platform is a pre-requisite for competing in this market, vendors are stretching themselves in various directions to make that platform more complete and able to meet the needs of the enterprise customer. BPM vendors have added modeling, simulation, testing, and optimization functionality, along with rules engines, portals, and a variety of back-end integration connectors. Some have done this organically, while others are looking for a faster means to an end, making acquisitions and mergers the perfect choice.
With the Proforma acquisition, Metastorm is differentiating itself from some of the other original, pure-play BPM vendors. While other BPM vendors have developed partnerships with enterprise architecture and modeling solutions, Metastorm’s acquisition of Proforma is a solid statement of their vision of the breadth of solution required for real, strategic business process management. The acquisition helps move Metastorm closer to competing against some of the infrastructure-oriented enterprise software vendors (i.e. IBM, Oracle, and EMC) that have made BPM their focus over the past year or two.
Upside Research believes Metastorm is taking a step in the right direction in seeking to expand its platform. The company successfully acquired CommerceQuest, a back-end transaction-oriented process management solution, two years ago, enabling its BPM platform to provide “round-trip BPM,??? an important differentiator in the growing BPM market. Previously, Metastorm had been known for its “human-centric??? BPM solutions, and adding CommerceQuest gave it some back-end legs and the ability to move further into the IT infrastructure.
Choosing an enterprise architecture vendor this time around brings a different focus. It will provide Metastorm with the ability to move its sales pitch further up the corporate ladder, and also more firmly toward IT, rather than the line-of-business managers that Metastorm has had success with in the past. However, this merger also brings a challenge for Metastorm to re-align its sales force to make that enterprise sale. The combination of enterprise architecture, business process analysis, and BPM is not necessarily an intuitive one, and therefore Metastorm faces a certain level of education in the market to convince its installed base and prospects that the three go hand in hand. Upside Research believes that all three technologies have merit and can optimally provide enterprises with a stronger value proposition than each separately. The key will be clearly defining how modeling enterprise assets can be more effectively and more quickly executed using a BPM platform.

HandySoft was an early player in the pure-play BPM market. The company’s BizFlow solution gained attention early as a flexible process management tool that was particularly adept at helping organizations manage their compliance needs. After releasing several SOX-based and compliance solutions, BizFlow gained a large following in the government vertical, and currently 35% of its customers come from this market segment, including 40 agencies of the U.S. Government. Recently, HandySoft released OfficeEngine, a thin client application that is designed to enable all corporate users to bring workflow and task optimization to their existing business productivity environment, namely Microsoft Outlook. With OfficeEngine, HandySoft is positioning itself to bring BPM to every corporate user through a vehicle they are already using. The company hopes to recharge its BPM market visibility and add to the more than 300+ customers it has around the globe
Upside Uptake
The positioning of OfficeEngine is an important departure from traditional BPM solutions, where enterprises need the entire platform to enable the process automation and optimization. With OfficeEngine, HandySoft is encouraging all business users involved in workflow situations to capitalize on the promises of BPM without the heavy structure that is typical. By introducing a thin-client BPM application that can be embedded into the all-pervasive Microsoft Office, HandySoft is offering business users the ability to become their own process creators and optimizers. The challenge lies in adoption, because it is always difficult to convince someone to use a new productivity tool. However, if HandySoft can get business users to try OfficeEngine and they are able to easily accomplish what the product promises, than HandySoft may be able to recapture the attention of corporate process managers who are tired of the longer, more traditional route to business process optimization. Building referenceable customers will be a key to the success of OfficeEngine, and the faster HandySoft can do this, the more quickly adoption of OfficeEngine will be poised to take off.

The emergence of BPM software as a service is continuing with an announcement by Lombardi recently. On April 30th, Lombardi released its new Blueprint solution for general availability. The software is available in a hosted model to business customers, and reflects the move in the enterprise computing market to leverage software as a services-based solutions. Lombardi Blueprint is designed to promote collaborative process discovery, which equates to providing operational-level business managers with a tool to help determine the best place to start with a BPM initiative. As a hosted application, Lombardi Blueprint is free on a personal basis, or for a team account of up to ten members, is available for $500 a month.
According to Lombardi, the genesis for this product came from the goal to help customers shorten the average three to six months it takes for a business to prioritize its business processes and select one for an inaugural BPM project. Part of the time is spent discovering the business processes and determining which one will be best for BPM. Blueprint provides collaboration tools among team members for the discovery process, as well as a repository for users to document their regulatory needs. All of this information is stored in XML, making it easily exportable into any other BPM suite. Of course, Lombardi also provides seamless connectivity to Lombardi for Teamworks, the company’s comprehensive BPM suite.
The Upside Uptake
Software as a service is taking off in a big way, and it is no surprise that the BPM market is hopping on board.There are BPM companies that are considering or launching similar initiatives around hosted services, as a means of testing the waters. Upside Research has felt that this is a viable model for some time, and is encouraged by the recent attention to this model in the BPM space, especially by a pure-play BPM leader like Lombardi.
The advantages for the customer are significant, including the ability to get up and running quickly, the lower costs, and the flexibility of a web-based service. While a full-blown BPM suite would be difficult to offer in a hosted model, especially with all of the necessary integrations to back-end systems at the customer site, Upside Research believes there are a number of peripheral services and tools in the BPM arena that lend themselves well to a hosted or services-based model. We look forward to seeing the BPM market get creative with this software delivery channel as businesses become more comfortable using this model for enterprise-scale business tools.

BPM is about business and technology, but it’s also increasingly about standards. Over teh years different BPM-related standards have been developed and are continuing to be developed. One of the latest is OMG’s BPDM, approved in March at OMG’s San Diego meeting. While Phil Gilbert, CTO of Lombardi has a good analysis of this event in his blog, I think the topic is worth a few words of discussion.
BPDM, or Business Process Definition Metamodel, is a specification that works in conjunction with BPMN and provides the specfiication for how to serialize (or save) BPMN in a platform-independent way. In other words, it will provide a way to export, save, and import BPMN across different products and platforms. That’s a very good thing. Of course, it won’t solve anyone’s immediate process problems, nor will it necessarily make it easier for companies to select or deploy BPM-based solutions in the short term. But I believe that it’s an important step in the right direction for businesses (and software vendors) in the BPM space.