In a move to invigorate adoption of its cloud computing and talent management applications, SAP has announced its intent to acquire SuccessFactors – a deal valued at US$3.4 billion . SAP’s years of development and business efforts have produced only mediocre results in customer growth and revenue in cloud computing for human capital management comparably to its expectations and others in the market. In a teleconference SAP and SuccessFactors executives hyped the potential of the combined organizations. SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott said that it will become a “Cloud Powerhouse” and a “Unbeatable Force” and “will become the number-one cloud computing HCM solution in the cloud – period.” This may overstate the case: SuccessFactors is unproven as a power in cloud computing beyond the appeal of its own applications for human capital and HR. It can’t compare, for example, to the reach of Salesforce.com and its Force.com and application ecosystems like that in sales, marketing and other people-related application areas nor provide a platform and tools supporting collaboration and mobility.
SAP Spends Big on SuccessFactors for Cloud Computing and Talent Management
Topics: SAP, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Mobility, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), HRMS, Infor, SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Taleo, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Management, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
SumTotal Systems Optimizes The Use of Human Capital
I just attended the first-ever analyst summit (Twitter #SumAS11) of SumTotal Systems to learn more about the company’s people and products since my in-depth analysis from earlier in the year. This key player in the business applications market offers a portfolio of applications in HRMS, workforce management and talent management, pieced together over several years with financing from its owner, Vista Equity Partners. This has been a busy year, as SumTotal acquired GeoLearning, Accero and CyberShift to gain entry into the expense and workforce management application markets.
Topics: SAP, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), HRMS, Infor, SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Management, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
Infor24 Makes Applications Simpler To Acquire and Integrate
The advent of cloud computing and renting of applications has provided another realm of opportunity for applications software vendors. Infor, which already is the third-largest in the world, is taking advantage of it. Infor announced Infor24, an initiative to bring its role-based applications into the cloud. It will use the Infor ION platform that supports other new Infor applications, including one for hospitality that my colleague recently discussed (See: “Infor Simplifies Hospitality Management Software“). Infor24 is built on the Microsoft Azure platform, which will help Infor support interoperability through standard interfaces such as SOAP, REST and XML utilizing Microsoft SQL Azure. Additionally Infor provides tight security on Infor24 and integration across processes to facilitate alerting, monitoring and reporting. This is an important step for customers as well as the company in balancing support for different ways to acquire software.
Topics: Enterprise Applications, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Infor, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM)
