Earlier today, Saugatuck had a good call with Jason Blessing, the new CEO at Plex Systems, who joined the company in early 2013. Saugatuck has been tracking Plex for more than 5 years – as we have long viewed it as an innovator in Cloud-based business software targeting primarily discrete manufacturing. While the firm has a strong heritage in the auto sector, we were pleased to hear that Jason has several new initiatives underway to help it not only strengthen the core but broaden the firm’s focus to appeal to other manufacturing sectors as well.

Jason was previously part of the leadership team at Taleo, which was acquired by Oracle in mid-2012. He brings to the job some very strong (and relevant) product and general management leadership skills, given his experience is creating, growing and scaling a Cloud-based apps business. As he explained in the call, in June 2012 the firm was acquired by Francisco Partners (from Apax), a San Fran based PE player. In December, an additional $30 million infusion was made by Accel Partners.

On November 9, 2012, Saugatuck held its 2^nd annual Cloud Business Summit at the Westin Times Square in New York City. As with our inaugural event, this year’s conference brought together large-enterprise CIOs, CTOs and senior business leaders to explore what is possible, what is real, and what is not in the Cloud today.

In this Featured panel, entitled “Cloud Business Applications and Platforms: A New Paradigm”, Saugatuck founder and CEO Bill McNee leads a discussion focused on where SaaS application demand is headed, the changing role of ISVs and enterprise architecture, and what the platform of the future will look like. The panel also explores the blurring of the lines between the business and IT, and how SaaS is helping to accelerate time to market for many user organizations. Joining McNee on the panel are Colleen Smith, VP at Progress Software, Scott Skellenger, Sr. Director at Illumina, Joe McKendrick, Blogger at Forbes and ZDNet, Ali Shadman, SVP at Infor.

What is Happening? — Saugatuck Technology research among enterprise business and IT executives makes clear one of the most substantial and disruptive trends seen since the advent of the Web, email, and distributed computing:

The pace of Cloud-driven business innovation is outstripping even the accelerating pace of IT innovation – and therefore is outpacing the abilities of established IT and business management organizations and structures.

What is Happening? — As 2012 marches to a close, a new focus on the enterprise Finance function is clearly taking place – with a range of viable and powerful Cloud-based solutions coming to market in support of upper-mid and large enterprises.

As our ongoing buyer demand research has consistently highlighted, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Collaboration (and to a lesser extent Social Networking) have clearly led in terms of early Cloud customer adoption (Wave I as shown in Figure 1). Following this flow, upper-mid-sized and large enterprises have begun to steadily embrace Cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions over the past two years (Wave II), as the first of several “core” systems of record being adopted in the Cloud.

Analysis of Saugatuck’s most recent global SaaS/Cloud survey indicates regional differences that can be critical in determining market focus, as well as in predicting significant trends in Cloud deployment. As global business conditions continue to fluctuate, particularly between contradictory demands for cost savings and growth, Cloud provides an important mechanism for meeting business goals, and Cloud activity is a good indicator of business directions.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that Cloud development is highly sensitive to business confidence, which affects both the enterprise goals and budgets. Asia is buoyant, and therefore willing to spend on agility and growth-related projects. Europe and North America are in a slow recovery, upset by a series of cascading crises. Goals and spending plans oscillate according to the anticipated future environment. In every case Cloud is seen as an important technology for handling either a growth or “stand fast” solution.