This is the first of the cloud-specific system evaluation criteria that I introduced last week.

The data model is critical, but far too often overlooked with system procurements, especially in the realm of cloud solutions when the database isn’t on your server. Here’s why.

The data foundation

Applications that are rich in structured data – think CRM, billing, accounting, HR, manufacturing or logistics solutions to name just a few – typically persist their data in a relational data model. The data model is the very foundation of a data-rich app and, like the foundation of a house, doesn’t change readily and requires a significant effort if changes are required. A major data model change requires a migration of data from the old to the new structure, which can be costly and disruptive. It may also demand a change to the application code that reads and writes data to and from the data model, again involving time, cost and disruption.

The balancing act

As well as being foundational, all data models are a compromise. No model can be perfect and each is a balancing act between simplicity and flexibility; the more flexible, the less simple. Most data models in transactional systems (i.e. those systems where data is entered regularly) are optimised for ease of input and maximum integrity of data. The pursuit of these virtues necessarily results in numerous related data entities (known as tables in most databases, or often objects in cloud solutions), the logic of which needs to be understood, especially if you’re planning to customise or integrate.

You must ensure that the balance struck by the data model in your chosen solution is sensible and matches the business rules of your organisation. For example, a billing solution may, for the sake of simplicity of data entry, structure its data such that an invoice always relates to a single parent order. If, however, your business issues periodic invoices that span multiple customer orders, you’ll either need to adapt your business practice to the solution, or opt for a more flexible tool. Either way, you’ll want to assess the time and cost implications of that at the evaluation stage, not during or after the system implementation.

Find a good data architect

Sophisticated data-rich systems may have many dozen or even hundreds of data entities, such that assessing the simplicity-vs-flexibility balance can be a major undertaking. For on-premise solutions, a knowledgeable DBA is often on hand to help, given that he/she will take responsibility for the installed database. But for cloud database apps, too often a DBA or data architect isn’t consulted at the evaluation stage. The good news is that the skills needed don’t change between the on-premise and cloud worlds, despite the fact that with the cloud app, direct access to the database tables isn’t typically allowed. The DBA or data architect you’ve relied on previously should be well up to the task of assessing a cloud data model.

Transparency vs IP protection

With packaged solutions, on-premise or cloud, some vendors may be unwilling to share details of the data model with you for reasons of intellectual property protection. A lack of transparency in this area should raise a red flag in your evaluation. Confident cloud vendors will share their data model with you, safe in the knowledge that the model alone is far from enough IP for you to reverse engineer their product. For example, salesforce.com openly shares their data models on their developer website, setting a minimum benchmark that you should expect.


Universal models

The other good news to note is that with relational databases having been around for decades, standard – or “universal” – data models have emerged for routine business functions and common industries. Universal data models are tried and tested over many years and hundreds of implementations, so provide an ideal blueprint against which to compare your cloud vendor’s offering. For example, if you’re buying an accounting solution, detailed universal models exist for handling the chart of accounts, transactional entries and the general ledger, so if your vendor’s solution deviates majorly from them, you’d be entitled to ask why. A wonderful source of universal data models is the range of books written by Len Silverston – bibles for data architects.

The data model is the core of your data-rich cloud solution, so I hope these tips will help you to ensure it’s up to scratch.

In the horse race of cloud computing, how do you pick the stayer from the nag? The stallion from the gelding?

When not constructing metaphors spanning equine sports and enterprise software (a pointless vocation with few prospects), in my day job I have the pleasure of helping clients navigate their way through the pre-race field of preening cloud vendors and their flighty solutions.

Invariably the clients’ IT departments furnish them with a dusted-off standard checklist for evaluating new software offerings, covering the usual points around functionality, usability, reliability, performance, security, support and the like. In the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing, however, these checklists, while definitely necessary, are insufficient.

Public cloud solutions are typically well presented, with the underlying technology shrouded in very pretty user interfaces and sophisticated APIs. With the application’s code and database being hosted elsewhere, and the purchase often made without the involvement of the IT department, it’s all too easy to omit the detailed design checks that have been routine in the evaluation of on-premise systems for decades. On a positive note, the constant enhancement paradigm offered by public cloud solutions (as opposed to the optional, infrequent upgrades of traditionally purchased software) presents a huge opportunity for customers to ride a wave of continual improvement if they choose the right vendors and products.

To meet these challenges, over the coming weeks I’ll detail here some important evaluation criteria aimed specifically to help with the procurement of cloud technologies. Armed with these tricks, you’ll improve the odds of placing your wager on the firm favourite every time.

I mentioned last week my impending appearance on Sky TV’s Technology Behind Business.

Thanks for everyone’s topical suggestions, of which I certainly mentioned a few in my responses. The 10 min segment can be seen on the website now so take a look.

We talked CRM, cloud, social media and customer service and I can only assume (until I see evidence to the contrary) that we were a huge ratings success.

Thought I’d share a recent experience from the world of mobile cloud CRM.

I had a meeting with a wealth management client this week to talk them through how best to expand upon their thus far introductory usage of Salesforce CRM. One of the protagonists was their head BDM, a savvy, high-energy sales type who demanded quick evolution of the system for it to keep up with his frenetic pace. We talked through foundational matters of roles & responsibilities, data structures and processes, which were critical to success, but barely of enough interest to keep the BDM from twiddling with his iPhone 4 throughout.

However, once we arrived at the far sexier topic of mobile CRM, his eyes immediately lit up as the killer concepts of sales, gadgetry and freedom from his desk fused in his brain. I began to talk through the potential, but in the minute or two it took me to explain it he’d found the Salesforce Mobile app on the AppStore, installed it, logged into Salesforce and assessed how he’d access his contacts, make his calls and take his sales notes in Chatter. He interrupted me mid-sentence with a simple “Yep, we’ll have that” and promptly left the room to go back to selling.

It was a stark reminder to me that the decisions around cloud and mobile technology can be every bit as real‑time as the tools themselves. And that salespeople dig gadgets.

I’ve been invited to appear as a panellist on SkyTV’s Technology Behind Business. This episode is titled “Has CRM failed?”, which of course attracted me like a particularly appealing red rag to an already jumpy bull.

The show airs on the Sky News Business channel at 9:30pm (Australian east coast) on Friday 15 April, but is also repeated at 10am Saturday and 9:30am Sunday, and is available on the website afterwards. At the Friday night slot, we’re competing on cable with Ultimate Fighting and 60 Minute Makeover, so if we lose your interest, flick over and watch people’s faces get mangled in one of two different ways.

I’m not short of opinions on the topic of CRM, but if you have any killer points you think need an audience, I’d love to hear them, so feel free to drop me a line.

JP Rangaswami of Salesforce recently posted 10 guiding cloud principles that Salesforce has been working for quite some time. The principles are aimed to promote, “openness, standards, transparency, trust and guarantees”. So what do you think? The comments in the original post are interesting. You can read them here and post your own feedback.

Here they are, ten guiding principles, in draft form:

1. Transparency: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should explain their information handling practices and disclose the performance and reliability of their services on their public Web sites.
2. Use Limitation: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should claim no ownership rights in customer data and should use customer data only as their customers instruct them, or to fulfil their contractual or legal obligations.
3. Disclosure: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should disclose customer data only if required to do so by the customer or by law, and should provide affected customers prior notice of any legally compelled disclosure to the extent permissible by law.
4. Security Management System: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should maintain a robust security management system that is based on an internationally accepted security framework (such as ISO 27002) to protect customer data.
5. Customer Security Features: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should provide their customers with a selection of security features to implement in their usage of the cloud computing services.
6. Data Location: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should make available to their customers a list of countries in which their customer data related to them is hosted.
7. Breach Notification: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should notify customers of known security breaches that affect the confidentiality or integrity of their customer data promptly.
8. Audit: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should use third-party auditors to ensure compliance with their security management system and with these principles.
9. Data Portability: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should make available to customers their respective customer data in an industry-standard, downloadable format.
10. Accountability: Companies that provide enterprise cloud computing platforms should work with their customers to designate appropriate roles for privacy and security accountability.

Just a quick reminder that the Spring ’11 release of Salesforce is right around the corner. Click here to view the release page for highlights or to download the full release notes or click here to view the release webinar.

My personal favorite improvements are criteria-based sharing which allow administrators to define data-dependent sharing rules with clicks, not code and @Mentions, #Topics and likes in Chatter, which enhances the ability to loop colleagues in and keep track of conversations.

This week Giles and I attended the 8th annual Dreamforce conference in San Franscisco. It’s not often that you go to a conference hosted by a company and find yourself surrounded by 30,000 believers who all love the product. This week has demonstrated what change really is and how it should be delivered.

Over the past few days Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, announced a series of offerings that changes Salesforce.com from being a CRM solution to being the leader in Cloud Platform Solutions.

In the coming months the following solutions will be available:

• Database.com
• Siteforce
• Appforce
• VMforce
• ISVforce

The focus of these solutions is to breakdown the barriers by removing complexity and deliver functionality in the cloud that can be used by all. To further facilitate this Salesforce have announced they are acquiring Heroku.

Marc also announced that Chatter, the collaboration tool from Salesforce, will be made available free. Collaboration is the new buzz word but this is the first time the word has been used correctly. Chatter provides a simple solution to the issue of information overload that we all suffer.

This tool is a game changer in all organisations because it reduces “noise” within organisations by :-

• delivering the information you want/need to know about so you are always on top of that deal / customer issue,
• allowing teams to collaborate in real time on any item in Salesforce such as projects or opportunities,
• allowing the users to easily setup groups which can be used to drive projects / sales teams / opportunities,
• delivering into your feed, the dashboard to allow you to focus on what matters in your role / company,
• being easy to use.

The best example of how Chatter is a game changer is the Chatter app that was released by Salesforce for Dreamforce, which saw over 17,000 attendees utilising the app. This gave us the chance to collaborate and meet fellow attendees, setup user groups, set agendas months before the conference officially kicked off. When I arrived at the Moscone Centre on Monday I felt like I already knew half of the people there because we had all collaborated in the Dreamforce Chatter app. More importantly, I’m connected with fellow attendees from across the globe and not just from my region developing one large community.

The Dreamforce app will now live beyond the conference and is now a true collaboration community allowing the “chatterees” to continue to utilse the app to seek solutions for problems, retain the groups we formed in the lead up to Dreamforce and grow other groups, ultimately help each other.

The most important takeaway I have from Dreamforce is, Salesforce.com is a game changer and is the leader in delivering solutions in the Cloud.

Please contact us for more information on the new platform initiatives or Chatter, and how you can transform your business by adopting Chatter.

Salesforce.com was recently honored for their role in shaping the Internet.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the registration of the .com domain, VeriSign and the 25 Years of .com Honorees Committee has nominated 25 online companies which have helped shape the internet as we know it today and Salesforce.com has been nominated in a category that includes industry giants such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

Salesforce.com was also recently named one of web’s most innovative companies by Fast Company for its enterprise cloud computing and overall Software As A Service innovation.

Salesforce CRM > AppExchange > SF Mobile > Force.com/Sites > Chatter…the innovation continues.

Scheduled Data Export is a rarely talked about feature that may make you a data savior one day.

Data Export lets you prepare a copy of all your Salesforce data. You can generate backup files manually once every six days or schedule them to generate automatically at weekly or monthly intervals. When an export is ready for download you will receive an email containing a link that allows you to download the file(s).

Below are the directions to schedule a backup.

1) Click Setup | Data Management | Data Export and Export Now or Schedule Export. The Export Now option prepares your files for export immediately. This option is only available if a week has passed since your last export. The Schedule Export option allows you to schedule the export process for weekly or monthly intervals.

2) Select the desired encoding for your export file.

3) Select Include attachments… if you want your export data to include attachments.

4) Select Replace carriage returns with spaces if you want your export files to have spaces instead of carriage returns or line breaks. This may be useful if you plan to use your export files for importing or other integrations.

5) If you are scheduling your export, select the frequency, start and end dates, and time of day for your scheduled export.

6) Select the types of data to include in your export. If desired, you can include all data in your export file. We recommend that you include all data if you are not familiar with the terminology used for some of the types of data.

I’ve personally seen this feature save many companies time, money and embarrassment, so setup this free feature today.