FEATURE NTEGRATED SYSTEMS FOR MARKETING & CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT
fully-fledged collaboration module to add to its existing features in that area.
“Real-time collaboration tools for the enterprise such as Chatter or content-sharing solutions such as Box are getting more attention,” says Eloqua’s Jenson. “The latest version of our platform was actually built on HTML 5 with the purpose of creating a more ‘consumer-like’ experience for the end user.” When it comes to infrastructure, the cloud is becoming the primary way to deliver marketing apps. Below the enterprise level, most firms lack the IT capability to implement, host and maintain an array of marketing software applications, not to mention the servers, databases, data hygiene and ETL tools that may be required. SaaS’s swift and largely risk-free start-up
process combined with predictable pricing makes for an attractive package.
“SaaS will continue to be the preferred deployment method for the foreseeable future,” says Hayward. “Users can be up-and-running much quicker than with traditional in-house models and it provides marketers with greater flexibility as they need only pay for what they use in bite-sized chunks.” Concerns over on-demand’s latency and security seem to be lessening as the years roll by but, as business users care little about the
specifics and simply want a quick deployment, IT still has a valuable part to play in its traditional role as gatekeeper. For example, the differences between traditional hosted solutions, single- tenant SaaS and multi-tenanted deployment are worth noting.
“People talk about social media integration, but what they really work on are very basic digital marketing programmes.” James Alty, Managing Director, Apteco
There are a number of pros and cons: the
latter offers continual upgrading and greater economy of scale while the other two may be simpler to configure or (in the case of hosted solutions) to customise.
All flavours should be very secure but if a multi-tenanted system is penetrated, multiple clients may be at risk rather than just one, multiplying the risk. There is also the private cloud, where the infrastructure is used only by one supplier to
service its clients (again a more traditional model), and the public cloud, where servers and so forth are shared between any number of providers.
It’s also worth remembering that in the public cloud, it may not even be possible to know exactly where data resides – a very sensitive issue in Germany for example.
INNOVATION AND GROWTH So where is the market going in the months and years that lie ahead? As noted by Eloqua, Apteco and Neolane alike, the sales process for marketing automation is often more one of educating potential users how effective these applications can be in solving business problems. The largest vendors will continue to compete to attract the largest companies but the drive for new business is naturally switching to tier two clients and smaller. We’ve seen it before in other markets and we’ll no doubt see it again. This is particularly important for B2B vendors, while the dearth of affordable B2C packages seems to indicate a gap in the market for a simpler solution. In this and most other cases, SaaS delivery of easy-to-use, more automated and simple-to-integrate marketing tools to the mainstream business world looks like the way forward. n
36 February 2012
www.dmarket.co.uk
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