PeopleSoft Vets Born Again: Can Two Legacy ERP Guys Get IT Executives to Buy into On-Demand Applications?
Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri sold a lot of ERP systems over the years. In an interview, the duo discuss why their new company is pushing on-demand ERP and why they're dissing the on-premise model.
There's so much change underfoot in the applications area and I think the best way to look at it is that the same technologies that the consumer Internet companies have brought are now being leveraged into the enterprise. And on-demand is the vehicle for doing that. If you look at the Salesforce.com versus Siebel analogy, on the margin now, Siebel sells almost no new application licenses. All the new CRM deployments are Saleforce.com and on-demand. Why is that? Because the systems are much easier to use, much more targeted to users, customers get value out of them almost immediately, and you don't have to worry about complex or expensive first-time implementations or upgrades.
CIO: What's the number-one obstacle you face right now?
Bhusri: The number-one thing for us is figuring out if the CIO embraces on-demand or doesn't embrace on-demand. It's that simple.
CIO: So what's your message to those CIOs who don't embrace on-demand?
Duffield: We're for real. There will always be the CIO types that want everything controlled internally and aren't comfortable without anything outside their own four walls. When the mentality shifts to, Let's do the best thing we possibly can for our company, both from feature function, service levels and costs, then we become very attractive.
