Scribe Software Blog

Creating a Scribe Online Text Connection to a networked drive

Using Scribe Online IS, you can connect to any source or target text file that is on the same network domain as your Scribe Online Agent – it doesn't need to be in the default Agent directory, as the Text as Source Wizard UI may suggest! This is great if you have multiple users pulling reports or performing exports that all need to be sent through Scribe. Here's a quick tutorial for configuring your connection to a networked drive.

Prerequisites:

• Scribe Online account with an IS trial or subscription
• An On-Premise Agent in your Local Area Network
• Have user access to a networked location where your files will reside

There are three steps to connecting to your networked text file: add the folder location to the ScribeAccess.txt, change the Scribe Online Agent to run as a domain user and configure the text connection in Scribe Online.

1. Adding the UNC path to the Scribe FolderAccess.txt file

After installing an On-Prem Agent, navigate to the installation directory and find the Text Connector folder, typically located at: (C:\Program Files (x86)\Scribe Software\Scribe Online Agent\Connectors\Scribe.Connector.Text).

There is a file named FolderAccess.txt you will need to add the UNC path of your networked folder to. Even though on my computer, I can access my text file by going to S:\Nate\TextLeads.txt, it's best practice to add the full path to my FolderAccess file. I found my UNC path by right-clicking on TextLeads.txt > choosing Properties > clicking Details > and scrolling to the Computer column. Using the computer name, I navigated in a Windows Explorer window to find my folder: \\My Server Name\Users\Nate\

Now I can add the UNC path to my FolderAccess.txt back on the Scribe Agent server, save it:

1. Changing the Scribe Online Agent to be run by a domain user

Since this is a networked drive, my company has only allowed access to this folder to specific domain users. I need to make sure that my local Scribe Online Agent Windows Service is running as a user with access to that folder. By default my Agent is running as Local System, which does not have access to it.

• Assuming you're a user that has access to this file, you can use your own account.
• If you do not want to use your account or your company has a service user account, verify that user has permissions to the folder location: right-click the folder > Security > check for the user or group that includes the user exists on that list. You may need to contact your Network admin to add rights to this folder.

To change the user, open your Services (services.msc) and scroll to the Scribe Online Agent.

Select the Scribe Online Agent > right-click and choose Properties > navigate to the Log On tab > click the This Account radio button. Now enter your username or domain\username and password, then click apply and OK. Now restart your Scribe Online Agent by right-clicking the service and choosing Restart.

1. Creating a connection to your Text file in Scribe Online

The next thing to do is create the connection in Scribe Online. Login > navigate to the Connections tab > click New. Create your own Text as Source or Text as Target Connection as you normally would or by using the Help Center's guides.

Make sure that if you have multiple Agents, the Agent that would have connectivity to the file is chosen. Now add the same UNC path you added to the FolderAccess file to the "Directory Path"

One thing to note about Text as Source is the ability to archive the text file after it has been processed by a map. The below configuration would move my file to another folder and rename it similar to"Contacts_Test-01-31-2013101629576Z.csv"

This has similar functionality to the Archiver.exe that Insight users may use in Integration processes.

Scribe presenting at eXtremeCRM and mAX in Rome Feb 3-6, 2013

If you're attending either of these terrific Microsoft Dynamics CRM and AX - focused events, we want to see you! At eXtremeCRM Rome – let us show you how the leader in Dynamics CRM integration can help you and your customers accelerate your business and make better decisions, faster, with Dynamics CRM in 2013.

Stop by our booth #11 to meet Henk Adriaans, the NEW Director, EMEA for Scribe. Lynn Harrington has returned to the US to focus on our growing ISV area of our business, and Henk is now leading the Scribe EMEA Team. Prior to joining Scribe in 2013, Henk served for close to 25 years in leadership positions in channel and direct sales & marketing, with companies like Oracle, QAD and most recently Exact Software.

Join Peter Chase, Executive VP and Founder of Scribe with the latest on Scribe Online. See demonstrations of solutions for ExactTarget, Silverpop, GoToWebinar, Znode, and more. Learn how your organization can create and sell market-leading integration solutions powered by Scribe Online. He is presenting Tuesday at 11:45am in Bernini 3, "Scribe Online: Revolutionizing Integration Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM". He also spoke during the Executive Summit, "Breaking Through the Barriers" how to scale your business and best practices for growth and re-invention of your business.

Other exciting news: we have 5 of your peers who are Scribe MVPs attending eXtremeCRM EMEA, and will be spending time in our booth. If you have Scribe product questions, want to talk through a CRM data integration issue you may be stuck on, or just want to see how YOU can become a Scribe MVP, be sure to stop by and visit us at booth #11.

Are you also attending mAX in Rome? If so, please join Linda Johnson, EMEA Regional Sales Manager and Anders Jeppesen, Senior Integration Specialist, AlfaPeople on Wednesday 2/5 at 11am for "Scribe or the Microsoft Connector: 5 reasons to Consider Scribe for integration with Dynamics AX."

Pssst... Do you know about our CRM Trends blog?

We didn't mean to keep it a secret, really! We have a hot new blog that focuses on trends in the CRM industry, as well as the cool new stuff happening here at Scribe. Depending on the week you might read a blog from our CEO, Lou Guercia, about an industry event and highlights from it, or get easy access to hot new topics written by other blogs we believe our readers will find valuable. Other reasons to take a read through our new blog? To get updates on new ISV partners that could provide new business opportunities to our partners, or discover new trends that might influence our customer's use of their customer data, to positively affect their business.

The idea behind having two Scribe blogs is to have one focused on market and company information, and the other focused on the more technical crowd.

Our Scribe Integrators blog remains alive and well, focusing mostly on product info, so you'll still come here for all that technical goodness to help you get the most out of your integrations. But do us a favor and check out our other blog every now and then, you might like this other side of Scribe.

Integration for Everyone

I was going to write a blog about getting more value from your existing business data with integration. We're going to take a little detour and talk about Scribe's State of Customer Data Integration Study 2012. There's a lot of great information in the study that I think customers and partners will find useful.

The focus of the study was to understand what you were thinking about when considering customer data, CRM, and how that's integrated with the rest of your business operations. There was one statistic that was a bit of an eye popper for me.

Only 15% of you have fully integrated CRM or customer facing systems. 15%. That's pretty low.

On the one hand, that's a great opportunity for integration vendors like Scribe. On the other hand, that tells me that we have a lot of work to do to make integration accessible to businesses large and small. One of the things that also stood out in the study was that business got the value of data integration but it was a bit harder to figure out how to make it happen. As I read the results of the study, I was asking myself what is it about integration that businesses are having a hard time figuring out where to start and how to implement?

There are a few factors that likely play into this: media hype, cost, complexity of integration itself, and many, many integration options, techniques, and products. It seems that most of us tackle integration like you'd approach your first marathon. You decide you want to really run a marathon. You want to lose weight, get into shape, knock something off the bucket list, and proudly slap a 26.2 sticker on your car.

Some of us start looking at training programs and decide it's too much commitment and change so we just drop the whole marathon thing and go on to something else. Others start out enthusiastic with our training program, but it's hard, we're not used to it and we're sore, and so we drop out after week 3 or 4. Or we follow our training program but we're setting goals that our body can't handle – like running a faster pace each training run to get down to a 7 minute mile – and we're forced to quit due to overtraining or injury.

Integration is the same as deciding to run your first marathon. Some of us start with "we have to integrate everything!" and realize the complexity, commitment and price is too high to do that, so we do no integration. Others run too fast and too hard – we're going to integrate our financial operations with CRM in 10 days! – and the result is a failed or half working integrations. We start integration projects, run into roadblocks – maybe an integration approach that wasn't quite the right fit, the tool we choose was a bit more complex or harder to learn, or perhaps a poor experience with the implementer. So we walk away and say integration is too hard, too complex, too expensive, and we just can't do it.

That's a shame. Integration is something that every business can benefit from – the trick is not running the marathon but starting with a 5K, getting some success, doing a few more 5Ks, maybe harder ones this time, and then building up from there to 10K, half-marathon, and finally, your marathon debut is fairly easy and you're ready for it. Slow is fast. Your integration strategy should start small and build on your successes and experience. If you need to do a big bang approach and you really are committed, then you need to get an integration expert to help you.

Almost all businesses can get the benefits of integration and there are a range of options to fit most budgets and problems. So let's talk about how to strategies to successfully implement integration in your business.

Be Real

Depending on what you read out in the media, integration is often presented as an enterprise vision of all your systems and data talking together. We use important business phrases like "operational efficiencies", "customer centric and social enterprise", "line of business effectiveness", "the challenge of engagement" – sounds very strategic and grand doesn't it? Vendors come in and talk about master data management, big data, data governance, orchestration, ETL, and hybrid – all the things important, enterprise businesses should be thinking about and you're an enterprise right?

I'm sure there are some eye rolls at this point and yes, Scribe is guilty of the above – hey, we're in the business of integration and we market just like everyone else – but honestly, how many business initiatives have you seen in your career become disasters because the scope is too sweeping and grand?

Even when we get down a level and talk about solutions to business problems, we still talk "large" like front office to back office, social, and supply chain. When I say I want to integrate my CRM system with my ERP system what does that mean exactly? What actual benefit will I see from all that? Where and what do I start? What is going to give me the biggest bang for my buck?

This is project management and planning 101 but it bears repeating - step back and really look at the business problem you're trying to solve. Be tactical and find things that will have actual results that you can see, feel, and touch that will have most impact to your business. Often times it's the little things that have big impact to your sales or support teams. For instance, you want your sales or lead qualification people to jump on leads from that last trade show before your competitors do. You can't afford to wait a week to have your marketing coordinator data enter the leads into your CRM application manually.

Being real isn't the most sexy approach but you'll have a much better shot at being successful and showing real business benefit for your integration project. More often than not, these are fairly straightforward and easy integration items to implement. Building on these successes gives you the ability to get funding and support for your more complex and sophisticated integration plans.

Live Within Your Means

Understanding the cost – money, resources, and time – is important. Setting a budget and sticking to it is equally important. Combined with a realistic integration goal, your budget will drive your approach and absolutely help you narrow down your choices to a reasonable level. It's easy to get sucked into "well, this has MDM capability for only $500 a month more". If you don't know what MDM means or how you would apply it to your business tactically, resist the urge to buy for "someday" or "for only $$$ we can do XYZ too". You want to be successful and you want the business to want more integration. Stick to your plan, your budget, and your guns.

You don't have to have large startup costs or buy an enterprise platform to get the benefits of integration for your business. There are a range of integration options out there, some starting as low as $99 a month (such as Scribe Online) that can solve the business problem I described above. You can find an approach that fits your budget and your goals, no matter how small or large.

The Right Tool for the Job

None of us would build a house with a screwdriver and we don't drive nails with a sledgehammer. The same is true for integration. Buy the right tool for the right job. If you want to integrate Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics GP and that is your most major business problem and goal, look at vendors that have products that actually have application specific connectors and templates that get you there with a minimum of fuss and custom work.

Going with a generic integration platform that does everything and anything but nothing specifically has its own challenges. It's tempting to go this way because we're feeling we're getting most value for our money; we won't have to buy another integration platform or look at another approach ever again. However, you need to think about "living within your means" because the most generic of integration platforms also means that you're likely doing some extra work to get your integration project completed. For instance, if an integration approach can connect to your CRM application via SOAP Web Services, that's great but if it means that you have to write Web Services calls to map and integrate your data, or perhaps even have to write custom code against an SDK, you can quickly get mired into more cost, more time, more risk, and more money. If you don't have the time, expertise, or appetite for this extra work, your money is better spent on a more targeted integration solution that can address your needs.

But Plan for the Future

This is a tricky one – you don't want to blow your budget or get overwhelmed with an integration platform – but you also don't want to pick an integration approach or platform that is so limited or black box that 6 – 12 months later you have to buy something else to accomplish your integration goals because something changed or you needed more. Make sure that your integration platform has enough flexibility to change as you change and that it has a suitable range of connectivity options that you can add other applications or endpoints later on. For instance, you want to integrate Salesforce to Dynamics GP integration and you're also thinking of adding in your SQL based, legacy support application in the next 12 months. Your integration platform should have native SQL connectivity so you can easily map your legacy support application to Salesforce.

That said, you also want to watch out for getting swept up in the hype of current trends and go with an integration platform that is too big, broad, or complex for your business and your abilities to handle. It's easy to be impressed by things like MDM, Big Data, Social, and a laundry list of connectors and solutions. If you can't see when or why your business will use or integrate with Big Data, don't buy a platform because it can handle Big Data. If all you need is to be able to de-dupe records and standardize address formats, don't buy an integration platform that has sophisticated MDM capabilities. If you see a laundry list of connectors or solutions, make sure that the solutions and connectors you want to use are current and will be maintained. You don't want to buy an integration platform that has an advertised connector for Oracle Siebel only to find out the vendor has not updated the connector in the last 2 years and has no plans to keep it current.

When evaluating integration vendors or approaches, makes sure that the solutions, connectivity options, and the vision or roadmap match your business goals and strategy for the foreseeable future.

It's OK to Need Help

You have a business and you do your thing very well. Frankly, for most of us, integration is not "your thing" that you do well. Some businesses have made a commitment to have a full time integration resource because integration is as important as their ERP or CRM systems. Many of us are between just starting to various stages along the integration journey. Some of us need help planning the project, picking the integration approach or platform, and implementing it. We may not know all the ins and outs of the cloud or legacy applications that we're trying to integrate. A good partner will know your industry, your applications, and have experience integrating them. You'll gain the benefit and expertise of someone who has done integration many, many times and has encountered all kinds of projects and scenarios. Your partner can advise you on best practices or what has worked for their other clients.

The price tag can seem hefty up front but in most cases, it's far less than what you'd spend in time, money, and resources if you were to tackle integration on your own. We found that customers who use outside help have a higher level of success and satisfaction with their integrations. There are a myriad of options – from hourly consulting to multi-month formal engagements – so if you need help, get it. It is truly money well spent.

Yes, You Can!

Integration does not have to be overwhelming. You've got a lot of options out there and partners who are willing and happy to help. Focus on the business problem you have and look at the information you have today in your applications – how can you better put that together or move it around to the right places? Start small with an integration project that is relatively simple to complete and fulfills a specific goal. You'll see tangible benefits from your project, the business will thank you, and you can continue to build up the sophistication and complexity of your integrations over time.

Let us know how it goes, we're interested in hearing your thoughts on integration. Share your stories with us.

If you're interesting in viewing our report, The State of CRM Data Integration 2012, please click here.

Blog author: Betsy Bilhorn

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old, Cloud is Silver and Hybrid Gold

My last blog post we talked about the top trends in integration which covered quite a bit of ground. Today we're going to take a closer look at hybrid and the "hybrid problem". Hopefully when we're done you're not equating hybrid with certain unprintable words. Hybrid can be indeed gold.

What is hybrid anyway?

Depending on whom you're talking to and what you're reading, the term hybrid can get confusing. We see people use the term "hybrid" to cover infrastructure or application environments, pieces of an application that are available on premise or online, or, lately, I've heard someone refer to a channel partner as "hybrid" because they were implementing both online and premise based solutions. A recent article on CIO.com refers to "hyper-hybrid". Hybrid seems to be one of those popular adjectives like "social" or "cloud" that are used pretty much everywhere and with everything. And of course, as integration vendors, we've got hybrid integration.

The most common cases where you see the label "hybrid" is in the case of infrastructure and applications. When we talk about hybrid infrastructure, we're talking about portions of your server, storage, and other data center components living both behind the firewall in your data center and parts in a public or private cloud. The situation is the same for applications; a business that has applications in the cloud and on premise has a hybrid business application environment. When Scribe or other integration vendors talk about hybrid integration, we're talking about integrating cloud and premise based applications.

The term hybrid seems to get a bad rap – it's a complex problem, so many pitfalls, it creates new silos, it's a problem. Proponents of the cloud would like you to go all cloud - the cloud just magically makes everything and everyone work better. If you peel away the marketing and media hype around cloud or hybrid, a hybrid application environment is necessary and a fact of life for most of us. And there are actually good things about hybrid environments – not all of us have budget or cast iron stomach to rip and replace all our business applications to pure cloud. Practically speaking, most of us follow "if ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to replacing applications.

Don't get me wrong, I love cloud applications. I love the technologies and user experience that cloud, social, and mobile bring to market. Those technologies have helped Scribe do things with our Scribe Online platform that we could never do with our premise solution. Cloud, social, and mobile has also got us thinking and planning about how do we incorporate some of those elements into our premise based solution? Speaking as the VP of Product Management, I could geek out on Cloud, Social, and Mobile all day long and never get tired of it.

Speaking as an executive of Scribe who, with the rest of our leadership team, has to manage the business and operations of Scribe, going all cloud loses its luster pretty quickly. Like most of you, we've been in business for a while and we have premise applications that are absolutely critical to our operations. Being an integration vendor, those premise applications are highly integrated with our business and with each other –it's not a simple thing to rip them out for the sake of being all in the cloud. Mike Ehrenberg, Technical Fellow at Microsoft and CTO for Microsoft Business Solutions, says it best in the recent CIO.com article, Forget about Public Cloud or Private Cloud, It's All About Hyper-Hybrid: "Our perspective is that it's irrational to think someone will go to work on Friday and all their work will be on-prem, and then they come into work Monday and everything will be in the cloud. People are going to live with assets in both places for a long time."

Scribe has implemented a number of cloud based applications in our own business operations over the years. I'll share some of our experiences and thought processes which maybe are experiences you've had or are about to have when looking at cloud applications. The reality for Scribe is that hybrid is the least risky and the best approach when adopting cloud. Integration can help further reduce that risk and best leverage both premise and cloud applications. Your hybrid environment just becomes your business application environment when you have a strong integration methodology and platform.

Let's talk about two common scenarios where hybrid (and integration) can be gold for your business. The first would be the case of the ancient premise system that just works but isn't very sexy and doesn't have all the capabilities you need today. The second is the case where you've outgrown the capabilities of a particular business system and you need to replace it.

Making the Best of What You Have

You know that system that everyone snickers and rolls their eyes about because it's probably from the 80's? You discuss every year that THIS YEAR you are going to replace it, you daydream about all the better things you can do if you had something else? Yep, we have one of those. That software is so many revs back it's embarrassing to say but it just chugs along, never has an outage, never acts flaky, and does what it's supposed to do very well and simply. We've talked about and looked at replacement systems or adding modules to our CRM system many times and we decided to not to do anything because the incremental benefit was pretty low compared to the risk, distraction and cost to implement a completely new system. The biggest beef we had internally was "I really need to see that information in our CRM system" and "I don't want to log into two systems". We have a cloud based CRM system – so instead of buying a new support system and launching a rather large migration/implementation project, we spent the time integrating our old support system into our cloud based CRM system. Problem solved. (For now).

The biggest issue was access to the data so we tackled that one via integration. That caused zero disruption to our support operations and now all our sales people can access support cases in CRM. The cost to Scribe? Other than some internal resource time to map and implement the integration, zero. It also bought us time to plan, budget, and evaluate new vendors on the merit of the capabilities and features we want in a support system. We can also use integration to two-tier the old system and our new support system into CRM so that we can have a less risky and smoother cutover. Our support reps can close tickets in the old system and work new cases in the new system. The Sales team has all of the support information – old and new – at their fingertips. We can then plan the migration of old support cases to the new system and do that on a longer, more controlled time horizon rather than a big bang migration approach.

Another way to extend the life of those older applications is to look for cloud applications that provide the feature or function that you really need and then integrate the two. Using the support system example above, let's say we can't publish knowledge base articles to the web very easily and we'd really like a full featured, robust knowledge base portal on our website. Our existing software can't do that. We don't have the people or the money or time to write something ourselves – and why do that when we can purchase a cloud based knowledge base solution? Through integration, we could populate knowledge base articles from our support system. So instead of ripping out and replacing a perfectly good – but old – business application, we can add functionality via cloud based apps and integration.

Picking the Best for your Business

Our second scenario is the case of the financial system that simply didn't fit our growing business. We had to replace the system with a new one – there were no alternatives. In this case, we did a thorough evaluation of both cloud and premise ERP vendors. What was interesting to note about the selection process was that at no time was the delivery platform – cloud, hosted, or premise – a part of the discussion or impacted the decision. Why? Because we knew whatever we picked we could integrate with our existing business applications. Having integration at the ready freed us to focus absolutely on the best vendor for our business needs. We ended up selecting an on premise ERP system and it is fully integrated into both our cloud and premise applications.

In this case, if you have a robust integration approach, you don't have to limit your options. All of these ERP vendors we looked at had APIs or direct access to the database that our integration products could talk to easily. In my past life at other companies, the choice of cloud versus premise was a very big deal precisely because we did not have a strong integration platform or integration strategy – how the API worked, what language it was in, was it LAMP or MSFT stack, and how difficult or easy we could write to that API was absolutely part of the initial vetting processes. Had we had an integration strategy other than custom code and getting to it later as a Phase II project, it's very likely we would have picked different vendors.

Why Partners and ISVs should care about Hybrid

Your customers have premise systems and they aren't going to get rid of them. While customers may be at different levels of their sophistication and use of integration, most of them know the importance of having applications share data and processes. What we're seeing and hearing is that integration is coming up much earlier in the sales cycle and in more cases, a key decision point. For instance, I might be replacing my CRM system but I'm extremely happy with my marketing automation vendor. It's very important that my new CRM system integrate with my existing marketing automation solution. If it doesn't, I'm going to be looking at CRM systems that do integrate with my marketing automation solution or I'm going to find a new partner who can make that integration happen. As a reseller or an ISV, you don't want to lose a deal because you can't integrate your application or you can't answer the question.

Likewise, you do not want the IT department of your customer to torpedo your sales cycle because they are concerned about an integration project with custom code and/or they don't have a strong integration approach already. Everyone is excited about the business value and now you've got roadblocks like "your API is in .NET, we're a Java shop" or "Cloud is bad because I can't get to the data" or "we don't have the time, money or resources to write code to this thing – it's easier on premise". You don't want roadblocks like this when you're trying to close a sale.

Have a good integration approach at the ready and answer "yes" to those questions, erase objections, and overcome fears. Anticipating and solving the customer's worries raises your profile – you've got an excellent offering and you've solved the "hybrid problem".

It's All Good

Premise, hosted, or cloud systems aren't better than one or the other, they're different. We all have different reasons for choosing these delivery platforms and sticking with our premise applications. If you have a good integration approach that can handle premise and cloud applications together, you can leverage the benefits of both delivery methods and get the absolute best for your business.

Next post we'll explore an old but good friend – the data you already have in your business. We'll talk about how to leverage the data you already have and of course, how integration can help you maximize that data in CRM to better sell and service your customers.

Blog author: Betsy Bilhorn

Happy New Year 2012!

As we close out 2011, we want to thank our partners and our customers for doing business with Scribe. We've had a big year with the launch of new products, Replication and Synchronization Services, on our Scribe Online cloud integration platform. We're equally excited about our upcoming release of Insight 7.5 this week. This version will allow our partners and customers to integrate wherever they are world-wide, and we're looking forward to working with new partners and customers in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe.

However, expanding around the globe is a bit more than software enhancements! We're making investments throughout Scribe to support your integration needs such as:

• The EMEA office will be expanding to a team of 5 and adding a dedicated pre-sales engineer. This includes relocating Linda Johnson, who many of you have worked with for the past five years. So, you will be hearing from Linda as well as seeing her more!
• Starting in January, Enterprise customers and Elite partners will have access to 24x7 Support for critical support issues.
• With the addition of Roger Hodskins, Vice President of Strategic Alliances, and more of my focus, we continue to deepen relationships with the global system integrators with whom we partner, such as Ciber, Columbus IT, Hitachi Consulting and Logica.
• You'll be hearing more about how multi-national Scribe customers and partners solve interesting challenges and reap the benefits of providing superior service to their customers, decrease costs, and increase operational efficiencies.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a sincere "Thank You!" for your support and business throughout 2011. Stay tuned for more in 2012!

Partnering for Cloud Success

The advent of Cloud computing and the availability of cloud based business applications is dramatically changing the IT environment for companies of all sizes. The Cloud offers simplification…simplification of the user experience and simplification for those responsible for managing the application deployments. It enables companies to get to value faster with their IT investments, allowing them to focus less on technology issues and place more attention on redefining and streamlining their business processes.

At the same time, the rapid adoption of the cloud, including the accelerating use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, has resulted in an explosion of new data coming at companies from all directions, including from employees, customers, vendors, partners, and other market influencers. Companies that can integrate, assimilate, and make sense of that information across the enterprise will be the winners. Being in the data integration business, this is really good news for our organization. To take advantage of this opportunity, however, will require us to work closely with the hundreds of implementation partners we rely on to deliver our products in order to meet the changing economic model of the Cloud.

A number of our partners are responding quickly to this changing landscape. They are transforming large portions of their practices from being technology integrators to becoming higher level solution providers. Many of these partners have built large portions of their business on doing traditional "systems integration", helping their customers make sense of many layers of the technology stack. With much of that work being collapsed by these new cloud services, these partners are moving towards creating industry or vertical market solutions that establish a new differentiation for their companies in the marketplace. Not only do these solutions offer built in application functionality inherent to the industry but also include pre-defined integration processes to a number of different Cloud and premised based endpoints.

Responding to these changes is having a profound effect on the businesses of ISVs as well as implementation partners. The most obvious is the profit and cash flow impact of the subscription model versus the old software and maintenance model. It certainly does not stop there however. How do implementation partners re-work the skills and talents of their work force to meet the new demands of our customers? How do we provide better tools to support these new demands? How do implementation partners become adept at creating and packaging IP? How do both ISVs and implementation partners look beyond selling software to the delivering an entire end to end user experience? How do we address the operational issues around upgrading and supporting solutions? I could go on and on.

On November 7^th, 2011, I will be participating in a panel at the Cloud Channel Summit entitled "Building Effective Cloud Channels: What's Working and What's Not". This should be a very lively and informative discussion as each of the panelists is wrestling with this question in their own business. While each of the panelists will bring their own insights and ideas around how to build these channels, the broader macro level issues outlined above will be the lens by which they should be evaluated. Addressing this important issue of collaboration between ISVs and implementation partners is critical to the broader adoption of Cloud services. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and hearing the ideas of my contemporaries.

Considering a new Cloud CRM System? Software Advice offers their insights.

If you're considering a new Cloud CRM system, here's an interesting perspective from Lauren Carlson, of Software Advice. Her article shares the top 5 Cloud CRM applications she believes are worth consideration before you make your decision where to go in the cloud.