Insights for IT Negotiations

Google has rebranded G Suite four years after launch, renaming it to Workspace while also creating new pricing tiers to appeal to current and targeted enterprise customers. Google, and Head of Workspace, Javier Soltero (former VP of Office Product Group at Microsoft), understand that Google must continue to innovate, integrate their productivity and collaboration tools, and craft new editions in o...

SAP’s hosting option, HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) was launched in 2013. In 2019, SAP shifted its focus and launched Project Embrace to add support for the hyperscalers (Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure). These moves by SAP are to prepare their customers for the end of ECC support in 2027. Brian Undlin, UpperEdges IT Sourcing Analyst, discusses where and how to host SAP, hosting licensing strateg...

Chip Hanna, UpperEdges Sr. Director answers 3 questions regarding the Qualtrics IPO and its impact on its customers. 1. How much control do you have in your agreement with Qualtrics now and in the future? 2. If considering a major investment in Qualtrics, or the C/4HANA Suite, should you buy now or wait until after the IPO? 3. How does this all fit with your plans to migrate from ECC to S/4? Host:...

Workday launches VIBE (Value Inclusion Belonging in Equity) and other new products that tie into its HCM platform. These new products are designed to add functionality as it relates to inclusion and diversity. There are two products, VIBE Central, which centralizes inclusion and diversity data to more easily track progress against benchmarks. The second product is VIBE Index, which is for HR Leade...

Accenture will be cutting 5% of its workforce, which equates to 25,000 employees. This is a normal practice for the company to continually improve on their talent base. What’s not normal is that Accenture’s CEO, Julie Sweet, said that the annual rehiring of new talent to exceed the 5% loss would be halted. With the lack of new talent coming into Accenture, companies should expect to see a shortage...

In this interview-style podcast, Salesforce Practice Leader, Adam Mansfield, discusses how addressing the fees tied to Salesforce Shield is an often overlooked way to reduce your Salesforce costs. He shares some of the pricing and commercial concerns associated with Salesforce’s security add-on and provides his recommendations for how customers can address those concerns to gain greater transparen...

Oracle Java Account Representatives are surprising Oracle customers with out-of-the-blue calls where they ask specific questions about the customer’s Java use. These calls have sparked concern among recipients who worry that this might be the start of an audit. In this interview-style podcast, our Marketing Manager asks Oracle Practice Leader, Jeff Lazarto, what these Java inquiry calls are really...

Salesforce had another strong quarter, surpassing $5B in quarterly revenue for the first time. Salesforce posted impressive revenue growth across all of its clouds (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Platform & Other as well as Marketing and Commerce Cloud). It capitalized on retailers’ increased need to rely on online sales channels during the pandemic, resulting in Commerce Cloud revenue growing 89% in...

SAP customers will eventually have to move from Indirect Access to Digital Access. In an effort to speed up this process (which benefits SAP), SAP created their Digital Access Adoption Program (DAAP). The financial answers to know whether to stay on Indirect Access past 12/21 or to take advantage of the program are complex. Devin Djerf, UpperEdge’s Senior Analyst, is seeing SAP clients saving by n...

Workday offers three different tiers of Customer Success packages Though Workday doesn’t actively promote their packages, every Workday customer should at least be aware of them. Workday offers three different tiers of Customer Success packages (Silver, Gold, and Platinum) each with a different set of deployment and post go-live services. Erwann Couesbot, UpperEdge's Senior IT Sourcing Negotiation...

The bulk of Oracle’s support renewals come up in late July and early August. If you're an Oracle customer, it's around this time that you may realize that you didn’t get the support you needed from Oracle yet your support fees continue to increase. One way to manufacture leverage for your Oracle support renewal is to consider third-party support. Jeff Lazarto, UpperEdge’s Oracle Practice Leader, d...

ServiceNow eclipsed the $4B annual run rate for the first time after beating consensus and guidance. The company is so confident in their portfolio of cloud solutions (ITSM, ITBM, CSM, Sec Ops, HR Service Delivery, etc.) and the proven sales tactics and pipeline they have in place, that they raised growth and profitability guidance for the year. Expect ServiceNow to continue to push their current...

Microsoft is clearly confident their portfolio of cloud solutions (Microsoft 365, Teams, Power BI, Power Apps, Dynamics365, LinkedIn, Azure Active Directory, etc.) and proven sales tactics will continue to push more enterprises to expand their Microsoft footprint. Microsoft beat expectations for the quarter and passed $50B in annual Commercial Cloud revenue for the first time. They also mentioned...

Google Cloud just kicked off their 9-week digital event series and made some important announcements in the keynote. Enterprises in particular should be aware of the key announcements (such as the launch of BigQuery Omni, Confidential VMs and industry-specific solutions) that will likely impact them as Google Cloud continues to focus on building and selling products that address the needs of enter...

Erwann Couesbot, UpperEdge’s Oracle Senior Advisor discusses common mistakes customers make when trying to assess their licenses for Oracle Technology Products, and more specifically the NUP (Named User Plus) metric Oracle uses. The top mistake is users tend to refer to their entitlements vs. how many people and devices are accessing Oracles software. Oracle doesn’t limit clients to their entitlem...

Jeff Lazarto, UpperEdge’s Workday Practice Leader gives a rundown of the top 6 things to do for Workday customers looking to expand their Workday product portfolio. Start with assessing your current deal, look at the competitiveness of your pricing and commercial terms, this will put you on good footing for negotiation leverage, especially if you have any existing pain-points or issues you’ve need...

Salesforce beat expectations with $4.87B in revenue for the quarter, which represented 30% year-over-year growth. Despite lowering their full year revenue target to $20B, a $1B reduction, the earnings call was filled with optimism. Salesforce is confident that its broad portfolio of products will enable them to lead the Fortune 500 through their accelerated digital transformations. In this podcast...

Salesforce announced the appointment of Gavin Patterson as President and Chief Revenue Officer of Salesforce. After joining Salesforce last year and quickly rising within the company, he is now the new leader of Salesforce’s global sales organization. With former co-CEO, Keith Block, stepping down earlier this year, could CEO, Marc Benioff, have a plan in place to eventually move Patterson into th...

Workday has broken up their Full-Service Equivalent (FSE) workers into different categories: Salaried Workers, Hourly Workers, Part-time Workers and Contingent Workers. Jeff Lazarto, UpperEdge’s Workday practice leader explains why it’s important to pay attention to how you categorize and breakdown your workforce based on this new structure; you can find flexibility and cost savings within it. Hos...

ServiceNow's recent earnings call showed a strong quarter and a confident Bill McDermott who emphasized the company's continued opportunity for growth in a post-COVID-19 world where companies will "embrace permanent transformation". In this podcast, Adam Mansfield, breaks down ServiceNow's "Fast-Start playbook" which features pre-packaged bundles they will be aggressively pushing onto companies. H...

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced their Q1 FY20 earnings which included an announcement that Google Cloud (GCP and G Suite) now has quarterly revenue of $2.78B, giving them a $11B run rate. Both GCP and G Suite continue to maintain strong growth that should not slow down any time soon based on the continued interest from enterprises. In this podcast, Adam Mansfield, shares his thoughts...

Microsoft outperformed expectations set even before the coronavirus pandemic and beat estimates on the top and bottom lines. Microsoft’s strong quarter was driven by the Commercial Cloud Business, which is largely driven by Azure and Office 365. Though both showed strong growth in Q3, it is important to note that growth for both is slowing down. In the earnings call, Executive VP and CFO, Amy Hood...

Most organizations have shied away from reducing costs of their SAP platform during lean times, but that’s no longer the case considering the breadth and depth of the economic impact of Covid-19. Chip Hanna, UpperEdge’s SAP Practice Director discusses some opportunities around AMS and hosting that companies have to drive down costs. There are a few levers companies can use—commercial levers on exi...

ServiceNow beat guidance and consensus in Q1 FY20 with subscription revenue growing 34%, reaching $995M. ServiceNow’s success is largely tied to the significant growth in the number customers that have expanded their portfolios and are now paying over $1M per year. There has been increased adoption of key products including but not limited to ITSM Pro, HR Service Delivery, and CSM. In this podcast...

The coronavirus pandemic has forced companies to seek financial relief in any way they can. Given the sizable spend tied to IT, many organizations start their cost reduction initiatives with a focus on cloud vendor spend. This is an opportunity for cloud vendors to lean into the relationship and provide win-win support. In this podcast, Adam Mansfield shares the most frequent requests he hears ent...