OpenText Bucks Financial Trends With Sterling Cloud Computing Performance

You may recall a couple of weeks ago we reported a pretty black week in terms of financial results with Microsoft, IBM and Google all putting in a miserable show for their respective financial quarters. Well, it took Canadian EIM Company OpenText to buck the trend, and it has done so in spectacular fashion given the poor state of developed economies.

Obviously OpenText is not as hefty as the other three information management gorillas we mentioned here, but the way they bucked the trend is instructive, and a lesson in how adaptability can make a big financial difference to the bottom line.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for OpenText; its net income fell to US$ 19.4 million in spite of a 10 percent revenue increase, due to an income tax provision of US$ 16.2 million.

But even after profits were adjusted, it easily beat Wall Street expectations by a spectacular performance in the cloud computing space.

OpenText Cloud Computing

Keeping in mind that OpenText did nothing in the cloud computing space in the same quarter last year, of the company’s total revenue of US$ 326.2 million for this, its first quarter, US$ 44.9 million of this came out of cloud computing this year.

Clearly, OpenText, which has been developing its cloud offerings for a while, has built them up in such a way so as to ensure that even when economies around the world are still looking sickly, it can still turn a profit.

This is particularly telling when you consider the cloud offerings of Google, IBM and Microsoft and the fact that their cloud offerings couldn’t provide them with better quarters.

It may be that it is just taking longer for these companies to turn the cloud into money just because of the sheer scale involved, but even still, this shows OpenText as an agile company that is able to respond to not just technology challenges, but also to business challenges.

But enough plaudits here; this is not an advertisement for OpenText, but just an observation on the value of cloud computing done well to the overall health of a company.

OpenText Licensing

To underline that it is worth noting that OpenText’s licensing revenue fell 14 percent to US$ 55.7 million in the quarter, with its overall performance boosted by the cloud elements. This follows similar patterns with other IT companies as corporation’s hold off buying, and reflects possible problems with future demand here. License revenue broken down by vertical was a follows:

• 18% financial services,
• 18% services,
• 17% from technology,
• 12% from basic materials,
• 12% from consumer packaged goods,
• 9% from public sector

There are also a number of other verticals that are less well represented, which goes to show that information management is something that runs right across the board, with CEO Mark J. Barrenechea expecting demand to pick up here in the second half of the 2013 financial year.

OpenText’s Future

With a build up of steam around cloud computing, it is interesting to see what Barrenechea is expecting to happen in the coming quarters in this regard; after all, if it ain't broke, don’t fix it!

Just a quick aside in relation to future plans. Barrenechea also mentioned in the analysts call following the results that OpenText will also be investing heavily in developing its sales teams throughout the year. He said they will be building a multichannel sales organization, a direct sales force, a partner sales force, a telesales organization and even a self-service store over time.

But back to the real meat, which in this quarter and in the immediate future is going to be in cloud computing.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Axceler, Webtrends Partner For Better SharePoint Governance, Visibility

There’s just nothing like seeing a couple of old hands get together for a common cause. That’s what’s happened today with the announcement that Webtrends and Axceler are joining forces to help another old pardner — SharePoint.

SharePoint Governance Is Suddenly a Hot Topic

One of the many interesting things about this partnership is that it comes on the heel of a spate of announcements about new solutions and software for SharePoint governance.

This week alone we had a new records management release from FileTrail that has a strong element of content governance in it, while AvePoint announced the availability of its DocAve 6 Service Pack 1 (SP) that provides governance for SharePoint.

You can go for months without anyone ever talking about data governance in SharePoint and then all of a sudden, we get a run of three different solutions from three different vendors in a matter of days. With two days left to go, could we be looking at a record-breaking week for SharePoint governance?

Joking aside, there is a serious issue here. It may be that the sudden interest in SharePoint governance indicates that the penny has finally dropped — and enterprises are beginning to realize that SharePoint deployment without strict governance can end up being extremely costly.

Of course it's important to remember that it is already the end of September — and by all accounts, there are only about three months left before SharePoint 2013 goes into general release.

Axceler, Webtrends Combine Their Strengths

Enough of that, and back to Axceler and Webtrends. This combined solution looks to manage user access to SharePoint and SharePoint content and to measure user access and engagement in SharePoint environments.

From the Axceler side of the equation, ControlPoint provides the user management element. Webtrends for SharePoint provides in-depth analytics of what users are doing in SharePoint and even who those users are.

Combined, the two companies (both Microsoft Gold Partners) are providing a solution that offers powerful intranet analytics along with enterprise collaboration governance. The companies say that this will ensure enterprise security and compliance.

As companies make greater investments into social enterprise applications with the promise of enhanced internal communications and collaboration, the question hanging over every organization is, 'Is this working? … Organizations using SharePoint effectively need a combination of measurement and governance to drive effective collaboration and provide a 360-degree view of the social enterprise, which is precisely what Webtrends and Axceler have teamed to deliver," said Jeff Seacrist, VP of Partner Solutions, Webtrends.

It remains to be seen whether they have or not — but if the partnership can provide effective SharePoint governance and user analysis, then they are onto a winner. Combined, they say, the new integration provides:

• Simplified adoption: Offers ways for enterprises to measure the level of content collaboration — by user, geography, team, project or site. Also offers insights into trends across the deployment.
• Restricted uncontrolled sprawl: Gives administrators the ability to uncover usage patterns and block unnecessary growth by identifying lesser used sites as well as popular access points.
• Corporate governance: Allows administrators to easily establish rules and protocols to control usage of SharePoint according to corporate guidelines. Also provides insight into how users interact with corporate material.
• Compliance: Offers better visibility across the entire SharePoint platform by automating SharePoint governance with the ability to establish rules and protocol policies; also boosts security to deter information theft.

With this deal, both companies expand an already impressive list of partnerships built around Microsoft and SharePoint.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Uber: When Innovation Outpaces The Law

While a disruptive service can be created by a couple of geeks with laptops, laws are born within the snarl of slow bureaucracy. They need time to catch up.

Uber, an app that helps connect car drivers with people looking for a ride, has expanded to more than 15 cities since it launched in San Francisco two years ago. But is it legal? Depends who you ask.

Taxi and limousine authorities in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York City have all started asking questions about Uber's legality, often waving around cease and desist orders in the process. Yet the startup, having worked out these squabbles in one way or another, is still operating in all of the cities in which it has set up shop.

Its legality is simply not clear-cut. There are laws for taxis, which you hail on the street, and there are laws for limousines, which you call in advance. But until Uber came around and gave people the option to schedule cars within a moment’s notice from an app, there was no need for laws governing limousines that sometimes act similarly to taxis--or taxi-type cars that could be digitally hailed. The company operates in a gray area of its own invention.

“A lot of this regulation was written before mobile technology,” says Josh Mohrer, the general manager of Uber in New York City. “In a world where a black car can only be arranged by phone, and you’re calling a phone number and they’re going to radio to the car and they’re going to come pick you up, and that whole process takes a half an hour."

A disruptive service can be created by a couple of geeks with laptops, but new laws are born within the snarl of slow bureaucracy. It takes a while for them to catch up. Uber isn't the only service that is caught in the disparity between the two timetables.

Car-sharing companies such as Getaround and RelayRides let neighbors rent their cars to each other, sometimes by the hour. But when it comes to deciding who should pay if one of those cars gets in an accident, the law is still unclear. A federal law protects car rental and leasing companies from liability in the case of an accident, but what about an individual who has rented her car? With no precedent, it’s hard to tell. Peer-to-peer room renting service Airbnb has also created a new category that lacks straightforward legislation. Earlier this year, San Francisco clarified that it expects the service to pay the same 15% tax hotels pay, something it hadn't been doing. Meanwhile, landlords who prohibit subletting without their consent have taken legal action against tenets who post rooms on the site.

The relationship between innovation and laws has always been this way. Vehicles were sold in the United States for years before the country got its first speed limit.
And airlines were already selling tickets to civilians by the time the first federal aviation act passed in 1926.

Figuring out exactly how a new service fits into existing laws is a cost of doing business when you’re disrupting an industry, and most companies accept that.

“We have found that when policy makers learn more about our business and the economic benefits our platform offers to cities and to individuals trying to make ends meet in this tough economy, they want to help," Airbnb's head of communications Kim Rubey tells Fast Company. "So our goal is to make sure we reach out and educate policy makers so that policies don't inadvertently inhibit the growth of businesses powered by the burgeoning sharing economy.”

In Uber’s case, Mohrer says policies, though difficult to navigate, have not inhibited the company's growth. They’ve hired no outside experts to navigate taxi codes, nor has it become the focus of anyone’s job. It's been a menace, but most disputes are solved quickly.

“We’re in the technology business, not in the lawmaking business,” Mohrer says.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

IBM Offers Social Learning Capabilities With the Release of Kenexa Learning Suite 3.0

So IBM snapped up Kenexa a couple of weeks ago for US$ 1.26 billion in deal that will expand its enterprise social networking footprint, but it didn’t say a lot about what it was hoping to do, nor what it was buying until this week’s release of Learning Suite 3.0.

Had it not been for the IBM buy this might have slipped under the radar as Learning Suite appears to operate principally in the very focused human resources space. However, looking at what it does, the possibilities for IBM are quite broad given the amount of business Big Blue does through its services portfolio.

Social Learning

Not that Learning Suite is a service.  It's a training tool that appears to be in the process of expanding its role in knowledge sharing and collaboration as well as acting as a training tool.

Among the social features that come with Learning Suite 3.0 are networking, interactive elements, knowledge sharing and collaboration along with a Learning Content Management system and, most importantly, mobile learning capabilities.

According to Rudy Karsan, CEO and co-founder of Kenexa, social learning now accounts for 80% of the learning that takes place inside the enterprise.

He doesn’t cite where that figure comes from and it seems a tad high, but there is no doubt that, increasingly, social tools are being used in the learning and training processes across companies, and any learning suite that is not completely up to speed with social tools is not going to make the cut in the market.

Learning Suite v3.0

Seems this won’t be a problem with v3.0:

Our new Kenexa Learning Suite with a Social LMS fuses social capabilities with the formal learning process, adding networking, collaboration and knowledge sharing to the online formal learning process. This fusion helps employees perform better in their roles, and provides greater job satisfaction as well as better overall performance for the company,” Karsan said. Among the new features in this version are:

Features of the latest version include:

• New interface that manages all student content
• Newly designed homepage that provides access to all course, assignments, groups, workspaces and search
• Quick links to detailed assignment views
• Explore tabs for all documents, files, expertise exchanges and postings, as well as teaching videos

And there’s a lot more. Kenexa’s Learning Suite 3.0, however, is not just an interdepartmental tool. It is capable of providing training to Fortune 1000 companies – companies with more than 10,000 employees, and with the social features expanded it will be able to offer knowledge-sharing over dispersed geographies.

Kenexa also points out that it is easy enough to customize the suite and set up multiple levels of review and approvals for it, as well as offer support for virtual classrooms through Adobe Connect integration.

When IBM bought Kenexa it said it would be integrating Kenexa's recruitment and talent management functionality into its existing social business technology offerings.

It didn’t say then, and there is no indication with this release how it is going to do this. However, US$1.26 billion is too much of an investment to be left idle for too long. Let’s see where Big Blue goes with this.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com