Such has been the success of Cloud application vendors that now everyone in the software business needs a Cloud product or, at least, a Cloud story.

Looking at the major software applications vendors, Microsoft Dynamics has CRM Online and has “shared its vision” for ERP Online sometime in 2012; Oracle has CRM On Demand and has Financials On Demand but it is really just a hosted On Premise solution; Infor has its plan but at its core, it’s based on their existing on-premise software; Sage remains decidedly earth-bound while SAP has pumped millions into BusinessByDesign with mixed success but appears to be fully committed to figuring this out.

How do you tell which Cloud solutions are truly Cloud based and which are fake Cloud solutions? Here are some questions to ask potential “Cloud” vendors:

• Are all their modules Cloud based or do they have a "hybrid" Cloud/on-premise model?
• Is their application single or multi-tenant?
• How frequently is their solution updated and what is the process?
• What level of customization can their application support?
• What is their SLA commitment and does it include penalties?

As a business executive, you may be asking "So what? Why does it matter if the solution is Cloud based or not?" In DSG's opinion, it does matter and here's why:

1. Total Cost of Ownership – this is the classic reason why companies should look at moving to the Cloud. Any number of articles, calculators and opinion pieces agree that a mid-sized company should be able to reduce TCO by 40% to 50% with a Cloud based solution.
2. Make IT a Service Not an Overhead - in DSG's opinion, the Cloud enables a strategic shift by making IT a expert based, subscription-based service not an internally owned competency. Plus the Cloud enables better service level since Cloud apps provide scalability, security and resilience that on-premise applications simply can't match.
3. The Time to Value - Cloud-based solutions can be deployed extremely quickly because the Cloud vendor provides a pre-built infrastructure, a Cloud implementation project is completely focused on business needs not on technology. Additionally, these solutions retain and increase in value due to the on-going automatic updates/upgrades on a regular basis.
4. Modern Applications Architecture - most Cloud applications have been architected and developed in the last ten years. As such, they have been developed with configuration and customization capabilities to meet the unique functional, workflow and user interface needs of their target customers.

DSG has been around SMB and enterprise applications for more than thirty years and we can honestly say that we've never been so excited about the capability and business value that applications can deliver than we are now with the Cloud model. The Cloud's scalable, robust architecture, latest software development techniques and subscription pricing are aligning the interests of software vendors, implementers and end-users around the central issue of creating business value and, as we like to say, enabling the Cloud Accelerated Business.

This year's Dreamforce event really confirmed that Salesforce.com and its partner community is defining and driving the evolution of the business applications market. The vision, scale and momentum of the Salesforce.com juggernaut is amazing and it's great for DSG to be part of a community that is defining how Cloud based business applications are evolving. Here are a few observations from the DSG team:

1. Momentum and Agility – unlike most multi-billion software companies, Salesforce.com is not showing any signs of slowing down or losing its agility. Salesforce.com has already delivered on the social enterprise and development platform vision that Marc Benioff shared at last Dreamforce – that's impressive by any standard.
2. Integrating Social and Business data – new enhancements to Salesforce are focused on integrating social data into the core applications. For example, Chatter now pulls in information from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – including a photo – to build a complete picture of everyone you interact with.
3. Mobile is the Future - a major theme at Dreamforce was the next generation of applications are being developed first for mobile devices and then for PCs. In the 24x7x365 business world, mobile apps are critical to the success of the Cloud Accelerated Business.

For any DSG customer that has not experienced Dreamforce for themselves, we'd urge them to start planning their 2012 visit.

NetSuite 2011.2 was recently released and the slide deck that accompanied our September Webinar is now available on the DSG website for download. The key features in this release are:

• Standard Costing - NetSuite broadens its cost accounting capabilities functionality beyond LIFO, FIFO and Average Costing with the addition of Standard Cost accounting.
• Vendor Bill Approval Routing – this feature provides finance organizations with automated tools to enforce strong approval processes for managing bills from vendors.
• Fixed Asset Management Module – users have been asking for a Fixed Asset Management module for some time now and this module has been released based on the proven Nolan Fixed Asset Management system.
• Automated Elimination of Intercompany Transactions – this frees NetSuite OneWorld users from complex and tedious manual elimination work.
• Ecommerce - NetSuite now supports Google Analytics Integration between your webstore and your Google Analytics account.

For more information on NetSuite 2011.2, please contact your DSG Account Manager or Susan Filyau.

Following up on many of the Dreamforce social enterprise announcements, the Winter '12 Release adds the following features to Salesforce:

• Approvals via Chatter – approval requests can now be delivered via Chatter to Chatter-enabled users.
• Data.com - Salesforce has added a partnership with Hoovers to the Jigsaw offering and now calls the combined service Data.com. This allows users to search Hoovers for account data and automatically create/update Accounts in Salesforce.
• Social Contacts - this puts links to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on each Contact record so that you are one click away from their social media.

This release also adds a couple of useful features including Forecasting, a simplified version of the Customizable Forecasts capability and security gets a major enhancement with the support of Permission Sets –which streamlining the process of granting access to additional objects on a user by user basis.

For more information please contact your DSG Account Manager or John Flint.

There is a perfect storm driving the Cloud as companies of all sizes use SaaS applications to reduce operating costs and increase the effectiveness of their sales, service, operations and finance systems. DSG has been at the forefront of this move to the Cloud and has partnered with leading ERP and CRM SaaS vendors like NetSuite and Salesforce.com to accelerate business performance. With its objective approach and proven Launch and Optimize methodologies DSG provides the right Cloud solutions to customers and drives business success while reducing cost, risk and time-to-value. To learn more about how DSG can cloud accelerate a business visit: www.DSGcloud.com.