Insights for IT Negotiations

This is the third podcast in our three-part series covering SAP Support Model Case Studies. Listen to part one on SAP RISE here bit.ly/3k0SGEe and part two on the “Do It for Me” model here https://bit.ly/3mMGFnB SAP customers migrating their SAP workload to the cloud have four primary support models to choose from. These include the “Do It Yourself” model, the “Do It for Me” model, the professiona...

This is the second podcast in our three-part series covering SAP Support Model Case Studies. Listen to part one on SAP RISE here https://bit.ly/3k0SGEe SAP customers migrating their SAP workload to the cloud have four primary support models to choose from. These include the “Do It Yourself” model, the “Do It for Me” model, the professional model, and SAP RISE. In this case study, a client who was...

ServiceNow once again posted subscription revenue growth of 31%, beat previous guidance, and raised full-year guidance. ServiceNow also now has 1,266 customers paying over $1M per year with an average annual spend of $3.6M. ServiceNow is so confident in their ability to execute to their land and expand strategy that they continued to reinforce the fact that they are on a clear path to achieve $15B...

This is the first podcast in our three-part series covering SAP Support Model Case Studies. SAP customers migrating their SAP workload to the cloud have four primary support models to choose from. These include the “Do It Yourself” model, the “Do It for Me” model, the professional model, and SAP RISE. In this case study, a client chose the SAP RISE model where they were able to choose the hypersca...

Microsoft beat analyst expectations, posting FY22 Q1 total revenue of $45.3B. Once again, Microsoft’s success is largely being driven by the success of the Microsoft Cloud (which includes Azure, O365, LinkedIn, Dynamics, and other cloud properties). Microsoft will continue to push enterprise customers to adopt (and use) as many pieces of the Microsoft Cloud as they possibly can, including motivati...

Oracle is getting more aggressive with their Java inquiries and has even created a Java sales team which is separate from their application and technology sales teams and their LMS audit teams. This separate unit is compensated for closing Java sales and they are using creative ways to identify and advance sales opportunities, often being very aggressive. Some customers have even said that at time...

Oracle has increasingly been including its Cloud Learning Services in their cloud proposals, often without the client even asking for it. Should your company invest potentially millions into purchasing these services to gain access to a series of learning and training solutions from Oracle University? Oracle Practice Advisor, Erwann Couesbot, discusses what Oracle’s Cloud Learning Services are and...

Workday acquired Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software provider, Zimit, which will allow Workday to offer quote-to-cash process automation to companies in services industries. While Workday has been doing very well in their recent earnings and are continuing to build out their solution offerings, aggressive growth through acquisitions, hiring, partnerships, and geographic expansion, can make it dif...

Microsoft recently announced they are going to be increasing many Office 365 suites as well as the all-in cloud bundle, Microsoft 365 E3 pricing. Beyond increasing the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), there are several other motivating factors driving Microsoft to make this decision. In this podcast, Microsoft Practice Leader, Adam Mansfield, discusses why Microsoft is hitting their enterprise cus...

Salesforce announced their FY22 Q2 earnings and they once again had another strong quarter, posting an impressive 23% revenue growth while also raising full year guidance by over $300M. On top of this, Salesforce once again reminded everyone how confident they are that they will hit $50B by FY26. Beyond the normal callouts to the strength of their product portfolio (the Customer 360) and the stron...

Workday has received approval to sell their applications within the US Federal market and its Workday Government Cloud product is now listed on the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) marketplace. This is a huge opportunity for Workday who directly competes with Oracle in multiple areas. UpperEdge’s Workday Practice Leader, Jeff Lazarto, shares his thoughts on this signific...

Workday and Google announced a multi-year strategic partnership that will allow Workday applications to run on Google’s infrastructure. With both Workday and Google facing strong competition, this partnership and its joint go-to-market programs will create more sales and marketing channels that will help generate more opportunities and better position them to compete with the likes of Oracle, SAP,...

ServiceNow posted subscription revenue growth of 31%, beat previous guidance, and raised full year guidance. ServiceNow also increased the number of customers paying over $1M per year by 25%. Not only is ServiceNow clearly executing to their land and expand strategy, but they are also having success pushing more products into the portfolios of net new customers as well. In Q2, the average deal siz...

Microsoft once again beat both top and bottom line expectations as well as prior business segment revenue guidance. It is clear that Microsoft’s overall success and ability to achieve $60B in profit, is being driven by the success of their Commercial Cloud. Moving forwards, customers will heavily rely on Commercial Cloud and the products that make it up (Office 365, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Li...

Oracle announced a new rewards program where customers who migrate or move their workloads over to Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) can receive a 25% reduction on their on-premise support costs. For example, if a customer consumes $1M in OCI credits, they will be discounted $250K towards their on-premise support costs. While this may sound great, there is a potential catch. Before enrolling, cu...

On June 9th, 2021, Oracle released its new Java Management Service (JMS). The free service is meant to help customers track, monitor, and optimize their Java usage across the entire enterprise. While it may sound great on the surface, using JMS could put customers at a greater risk of being audited by Oracle. Jeff Lazarto, UpperEdge’s Oracle Practice Leader, speaks more about Oracle’s JMS and the...

In their recent Q1 earnings call, Co-CEOs Chano Fernandez and Aneel Bhusri spent a good amount of time talking about Workday’s growth goals and where they are focusing their efforts. First, hey are looking to increase their global work force by more than 20% (2,500 new hires by the end of 2021). Second, and this is a longer-term goal, is to get to $10B in annual revenue; they are currently forcast...

Salesforce announced their Q1 FY22 earnings and they once again had another strong quarter. CEO, Mark Benioff, mentioned that they are not only raising FY22 revenue guidance to $26B, but that this $250M increase is the largest raise they have ever had. On top of this, Salesforce once again reminded everyone how confident they are that they will hit $50B by FY26. Salesforce’s “super strong” pipelin...

Last week, ServiceNow held its virtual Financial Analyst Day event ahead of its annual Knowledge conference kick off. During it, ServiceNow laid out how they will grow from $5.5B in revenue at the end of 2021 to $15B in FY26. It all comes down to the tried-and-true SaaS vendor “land and expand” playbook. Beyond putting an emphasis on landing new customers, they are going to rely on growth, cross s...

Workday has stated in earnings calls that it will be investing in accelerating pipeline growth and advancing their strategic product roadmaps. It will make investments in tuck-in acquisitions, enhancing development capabilities and in increasing marketing, branding, and sales campaigns. While customers could benefit from enhanced functionality on the product side, the investments in sales and mark...

ServiceNow had another strong quarter, exceeding high end revenue guidance and Wall Street estimates. On top of that, they now have over 1,100 customers paying over $1M per year, which represents an impressive 23% growth from last year. ServiceNow’s goal is clearly to expand customers’ portfolios and for net new customers to start out with as many products as possible from as many of their “workfl...

Microsoft had another strong quarter, beating both top and bottom line analyst estimates as well as prior revenue guidance. Microsoft continues to rely heavily ramping adoption of the products within Microsoft’s commercial cloud technology stack (e.g., Microsoft 365, Azure, Power Platform, Dynamics 365, LinkedIn, etc.) and has proven to be successful in doing so. Microsoft’s Commercial Cloud reven...

We’re seeing a new twist on the dynamic of Oracle audits which has long been a source of fear and frustration among customers. As Oracle pushes their clients to adopt its more profitable cloud software solutions such as Fusion ERP and Autonomous Database, they are increasingly auditing existing software to find out-of-compliance situations and initiate a sales cycle to push cloud software packages...

Nearly every enterprise has at least one relationship with a SaaS cloud provider. Unfortunately, cloud vendors such as Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Microsoft, etc., often take actions or communicate in ways that frustrate enterprise cloud customers and potentially even harm the relationship. In this podcast, Practice Leader Adam Mansfield, discusses the complaints he most often hears from IT,...

Oracle’s Q3 FY’21 earnings call made headlines after Larry Ellison touted cloud growth while making a dig at SAP. He stated that over 100 new customers who either fully or partially moved to Oracle’s cloud products had switched over from SAP. He went on to say that SAP’s customers are “up-for-grabs” because SAP has not rewritten any of its software for the cloud, essentially saying they are not a...