ETRM IN THE CLOUD
among small to mid-sized companies able to pay up to 250K GBP”. A 2011 IDC survey showed 7.7% of North
American utilities using a SaaS ETRM solution. Here SaaS means a one-to-many delivery over the web. An additional 7.1% reported using a packaged solution hosted by an external provider. Here the distinction is a one-to-one service. Taken together, 14.8% of utilities are using a hosted solution compared to 32.7% reporting using a packaged solution on premises – a traditional local installation. The numbers were higher among oil & gas
companies. 10.2% reported using a SaaS ETRM solution. A further 16.9% use a packaged solution hosted by an external provider as a one-to-one service. Taken together, the 27.1% on hosted solutions is larger than the 23.2% who report using a packaged solution on premises. The sample was skewed toward small to mid-tier companies. Vuepoint reports that “90% of our customers now use our SaaS service and we are taking a hard look at the viability of the traditional local installation model. Our goal is 100% SaaS”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Aspect reports
exceptionally strong uptake among shops without an IT department.
development
Triple Point’s Michael Schwartz says, “the organization,
QA team
and
demo group all use Amazon’s cloud computing environment to do their jobs of building, testing and demonstrating Commodity XL. At this moment, Triple Point is running over 200 cloud instances on Amazon. In addition to our cloud work on Commodity XL, Triple Point is in the process of moving its entire internal computing environment to the cloud. We don’t just sell cloud solutions to our clients, we use it ourselves”.
Triple Point is on a tear. Over the past 5 years,
revenue is up an average of 35% each year. It’s 50% for profits. They signed 43 new names in 2012.
As is often the case with disruptive new
... the cloud may be positioned as a way to do more with less, a way to focus internal IT resources at the high end of the value chain
Corporate IT is changing. Mature functions are being outsourced. If you’re a big shop, your servers may not even reside within your four walls. You’re now probably able to bring your own device to work. Corporate IT is getting out of the hardware business. Applications would seem the logical next step.
All of this can seem threatening to Corporate
IT. To get past this resistance, the cloud may be positioned as a way to do more with less, a way to focus internal IT resources at the high end of the value chain. One way Aspect keeps Corporate IT positively engaged is by having them manage the security configuration and script their own reports.
Where Are The Vendors? The cloud has been widely adopted by the
vendors themselves. OpenLink’s Gallagher reports that, in addition to cloud offerings of their flagship products, the company makes extensive use of the cloud internally. “It is used by salespeople for demos of multi-user environments or distributed processing, for QA labs, for prototyping and for pre- upgrade testing”.
technologies, the market has opened to new entrants. Several shops made the point that theirs was not a legacy client-server application. It was built from the ground up for the cloud. Aspect has always been Java, HTML and browser based. Contigo’s enTrader is based on modern architecture including
MS.NET, webservices and browsers. There seemed to be a dismissive tone toward Citrix, an application which can essentially bootstrap a client/server application onto the cloud. It was variously described as putting ‘lipstick on a pig’ and ‘a cloud veneer’ but I was unable to identify specific limitations. Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. (By the way, that’s Niels Bohr, not Yogi Berra.) But you can’t help but feel that the ground
is moving. Vertically integrated companies are focusing and outsourcing. Unless we can provision servers and manage software better than anyone else, why are we even trying? The ETRM migration to the cloud is underway. Smaller players who face the least complexity are leading the way. As they succeed and functionality evolves to support ever larger players, the middle market will be sorely tempted to follow. There may be certain players whose business is so special and complex that a cloud offering will never work for them. But one has to wonder. Did the Billion Dollar Boys start their journeys with the same idea in mind? •
Larry Hickey is a Managing Director with Aneris XTRM and frequent contributor to these pages. He has spent the past 14 years implementing industry-leading ETRM solutions. He is regularly called upon to turn around troubled projects.
Thanks to the following industry leaders who contributed to this article. Mike Gallagher, Jon Hobbs, Hugo Stappers,
Yags Savania, Brigette Gebhard, Mark Taylor, Dick Couron, Jill Feblowitz, Mack Miller, and Michael Schwartz.
March 2013 73
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84