Insights for IT Negotiations

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...

Salesforce had yet another strong quarter and a strong year despite the challenges the pandemic presented. With 24% growth in full year revenue, Salesforce achieved its longtime goal to become a $21B company. In the earnings call, Benioff talked about how they were set up ahead of the pandemic and how relying on their own products, enabled them to be successful. They also posted an impressive 40%...

Workday is looking to fill out their product portfolio through acquisitions as opposed to going out and buying market share which is a strategy Oracle once used back in the early 2000s. Peakon will allow Workday to gather data on employee engagement, diversity & inclusion, health & wellbeing, as well as company culture. Jeff Lazarto, UpperEdge’s Practice Leader for Workday, discusses more about th...

If you are considering Oracle and you begin to evaluate an Oracle Fusion HCM proposal, it is important that you insist on full pricing transparency.  This will enable you to conduct your due diligence, build out some financial modeling, and evaluate different pricing scenarios. UpperEdge's Practice Leader, Jeff Lazarto, discusses three key terms to review in this podcast. Host: Jeff Lazarto: https...

ServiceNow had another strong quarter and year, beating expectations and landing even more customers spending over $1M per year. While ServiceNow’s revenue is still heavily coming from its IT Workflows solutions (ITSM, ITOM, ITBM, GRC (now IRM), and Security Operations, etc.), ServiceNow continues to gain adoption of Customer Workflows (CSM, Field Service Management) and Employee Workflows (HR Ser...

Microsoft had a strong Q2, crushing revenue expectations, while continuing to rely heavily on its commercial cloud offerings (e.g., Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, LinkedIn, etc.). Commercial Cloud revenue ($167B) was up 34%. In this podcast, Microsoft Practice Leader, Adam Mansfield, discusses where Microsoft is focusing specifically such as ramping Azure consumption, moving more enterprise c...

Many Microsoft enterprise customers are about to embark on their first renewal negotiation since adopting the all-in cloud bundle, Microsoft 365. Many will be faced with significant challenges as the appropriate contractual and commercial arrangement, including pricing, was not previously put in place. The good news is, there is still a path forward that can result in an optimized and improved go-...

Justin Parker, UpperEdge's Practice Director, discusses the importance of an IT cost optimization framework. To truly be successful at optimizing your IT costs, your efforts cannot be seen as one-time events, it's what you have to do on ongoing basis—thus making a framework for your programs exceedingly important. Host: Justin Parker: https://bit.ly/3C895y4 IT Cost Optimization Advisory Services:...

Justin Parker, UpperEdge's Practice Director discusses how to best identify, assess and analyze potential IT cost optimization opportunities. Earlier this year Justin co-hosted a webcast: “Driving Effective Cost Reduction: It’s All-Hands-on-Deck!" where he covers this topic in-depth; this podcast is an excerpt from that webcast. Host: Justin Parker: https://bit.ly/3C895y4 IT Cost Optimization Advi...

Over the last several years, UpperEdge Practice Director, Justin Parker, has supported many clients with their SAP hosting RFPs and advised them on the appropriate sourcing strategy to ensure that their objectives are met today and well into the future. This podcast is an excerpt from the webcast: Demystifying the SAP Hyperscaler Hosting Market, where Justin highlights several considerations for m...

Unlike some of its competitors, Oracle is seeing growth and better performance overall in 2020. However, it’s slow growth as Oracle moves to the cloud and off of its dominant on-premise solutions, which takes in revenue upfront vs. cloud subscription revenues. Jeff Lazarto, UpperEdge’s Oracle Practice Leader, gives insights on Oracle’s move to the cloud, new streams of revenue, and profitability....

There’s an important role that internal alignment plays on the success of your IT cost optimization program. Early in 2020, Justin Parker, UpperEdge Practice Director co-hosted a webcast: “Driving Effective Cost Reduction: It’s All-Hands-on-Deck!” where he covers this topic in-depth; this podcast is an excerpt from that webcast. Host: Justin Parker: https://bit.ly/3C895y4 SAP Commercial Advisory S...

UpperEdge Practice Director, Justin Parker, discusses how many organizations are grappling with the key decision of where and how they will host their SAP workloads. More recently, organizations are starting to consider one of the many hyperscaler hosting platforms. There are several market dynamics driving this shift such as increasing customer expectations, overall pace of change in the IT marke...

If you’re concluding a year-end deal with SAP in 2020, there are many things you need to think about. SAP, like everyone else, has had to readjust expectations with the market. They made some major leadership changes, but they are looking ahead with relief and optimism. With this in mind, Chip Hanna, UpperEdge’s SAP Practice Director, covers four strategies to approach SAP as the year comes to an...

Salesforce officially announced they are acquiring business communication platform, Slack, for roughly $28B. Why did Salesforce make its largest acquisition in history and what does it mean for current Slack and/or Salesforce customers? What should enterprises expect from Salesforce as it pushes them to adopt Slack and replace Microsoft Teams? In this podcast, Salesforce Practice Leader, Adam Mans...