Cloud Computing Practice Overview

Bessemer Venture has been an advocate of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for years now. They've compiled a one-pager of all potential providers of cloud services in different areas of the business. Get the one-pager here.

Apple's iPhone forcing smartphone industry change by Computerworld

The intensely competitive smartphone industry is becoming an increasingly challenging space. Analysts say Apple [AAPL] has achieved the largest share of hardware sales and revenue, putting competitors on any current platform (Android, Microsoft, RIM, etc.) under lots of pressure. In this environment, surely it won't be long until another round of mergers and acquisitions begins?

[ABOVE: Thanks to Asymco for this image, which shows how much things have changed since Apple invaded the mobile industry with the iPhone.]
Apple's game to lose
Surely it's obvious? Think about this: Asymco's Horace Dediu, believes four of the biggest smartphone makers lost money in the last quarter: Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson and LG.

For more on this click here. 

Cloud war already started?

For months, I've been waiting for somebody to write an article about cloud-based services which features bigwigs like Micrsoft, EMC, Apple and some unknown players in the market. The day finally came but I was more disappointed than excited about the article as it failed to recognized other David's in the market.

Also, what do you consider players in this market and how do you classify them in such groups? Is it the services they provide or the target markets they're trying to penetrate?

I wonder if Sharepoint will have new competitors once Office 365 goes to market.

Read more about the article here.

The Dynamics Decade

I liked this article because it shows you the history of the company I've grown to follow and the individuals who have contributed to its success over the years. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Microsoft originally created a Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions brand headed by Great Plains Chairman and CEO Doug Burgum, who became a Microsoft senior vice president and president of the Great Plains Division. Burgum reported to Jeff Raikes, then group vice president of Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services Group.


Read the full article here.

The New York City SharePoint Developers User Group Monthly Meetup

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

5:30 PM

Microsoft Office NYC - 6th Floor

1290 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY

Required apps for Cloud computing

You've done your research and know the differences in business model between the 3 areas of cloud computing:

• SaaS (software-as-a-service). WAN-enabled application services
• PaaS (platform-as-a-service). Foundational elements to develop new applications
• IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service). Providing computational and storage infrastructure in a centralized, location-transparent service

So you decided to jumped on the bandwagon. Now you're planning the operations of the company and looking at the operational processes from the point of contact to revenue recognition. You start creating the flow and do an inventory of the applications required for each process. At a high-level this is what you had at the end:

CRM - This system will initialize the process. A simple CRM sales cycle include prospecting, proposal then Win. You can go for On-demand or On-premise solutions.

Contract Management -  The contract creation should be simple yet flexible. These days CMS softwares are flexible enough to create contracts in different languages which caters to different regions - EMEA, AsiaPac, etc. Flexibility is very important because contracts can have different data elements and the application should have this feature.
Billing - This is the heart of the whole system. When looking for this system, you should understand that this goes to details of your process so involve hands-on users as they know what's important to this process. Accurate billing is your main objective here. Invoice formats is likewise an important piece.
Collections - With companies going global, expect that customers will require you to cater to their needs. One common pitfall of this system is the ability to receive payments other than the customer's region currency. Your system should be flexible enough to accept payments in different currencies. You don't want to return a payment because it's on the wrong currency...Money is king!
Usage Metrics -  Every customer using your service expect to know their monthly usage. This system should be able to track where the customer is in terms of usage. If you're sending a monthly invoice to your customers then this is based on monthly usage. Some companies support real-time usage on their websites for customers to see.
Revenue Recognition - The accounting for Cloud computing is still on its infancy. New accounting rules will be define in the coming years and this will change how applications determine Revenue recognition. The juice of the discussion will focus on how to leverage this new way of doing business. Revenue calculations will neatly integrate with customers subscription contracts but there are other ways of doing business in the cloud which can define how the new rules will be laid out.
General Ledger -The last piece of the puzzle but not the least important as this can determine if your process is working or not. Other applications will feed this system, application or module. You have to know your integration points and GAAP rules that govern those systems. Don't take your reconciliation process for granted.
Others - Tax, reporting - financial and operational, templates,etc.

Integrating with Dynamics GP - Part II

One of the more complex integration in this project were the customer payments integration and Revenue. The entry point of the integrated data in GP will be in two (2) windows: General Ledger and Bank Deposits.

The General Ledger integration were the entries originally created from the Revenue & Expense Deferral (RED) module. Now that the subledger is non-resident to GP, we have to create the middleware to do this. It was a mix of SSIS & Dexterity and since the host system was on Oracle we had to create Linked Servers.

The Bank Deposits is pretty straight forward as customer payments were received from the billing system, the entries are booked to GP as cash and a separate GL entries are created.

Another complexity in this project is the data migration of the subscription contracts in GP. We were using a 3rd-party product and we made customizations which slices the contracts on an annualized basis. All active contracts were migrated so billing can continue on the new system.

Lastly, reporting and Smartlist. Given that subledger reports will be coming out of the new system, the reconciliation process between GL & Subledger will change. Smartlist reports for subledgers goes away as well.

NYC Sharepoint Developers User Group Meetup

The NYC Sharepoint Developers User Group will meet again on Oct. 20 at the Microsoft office in the Avenue of Americas, NY.

The topic for October is "Word Automation Services in Sharepoint 2010" by Kenneth Cooper.

Join us by visiting the website here.

IntraLinks Holdings Inc. is now public

IntraLinks is now a public company (NYSE: IL). Our company is a cloud services provider of online secure exchanges for different industries including Financial services, Life Sciences, Alternative Investments, Real Estate, Legal, Manufacturing and others.

To check our stock in NYSE, here's the link: http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/il_news.html

Here's a clip of our CEO in Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/63320076/

Integrating with Dynamics GP

I've been through a lot of GP integrations and most of them were very straight forward. In my current environment we have integrations from different sources including Salesforce to SOP module, IT Asset management to Fixed Assets module(including bar-code implementation), ADP to GL, and others.

The current work will be considered the most challenging as we're moving the AR subledger to a new Oracle-based billing software and GP will be processing General Ledger entries from this system. So what's involved? The following transactions will be created in the new system and all the journal entries will be push to GP - customer payments (Lockbox, Wired,etc.), invoices, credits, write-offs, refunds(AP entry) and others.

I guess the experts are telling themselves this is NOT much of a challenge, well not really and why? That's just the first part of this integration and since we're a subscription-based environment like Salesforce, we need to create deferred schedules for each document integrated. I'll stop there for now and let you create your own architecture for this integration.

Jack Dorsey on Twitter and Square

I was watching Beyond the Boardroom this weekend with their guest Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey. Jack introduces his new product - Square, a revolutionary mobile credit card reader that plugs into the audio port of compatible smart phones and laptops.

Also in this episode, Jack discussed the importance of Twitter in business including applications built around Twitter.

Here's an excerpt from the episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVc596DJYR8

Watch the World Cup

Here's a good website to find a popular venue based on your team for the World Cup. The website also shows the schedule of the preliminary games. Click here to go to the website.

Convergence 2010 - Exciting Atlanta

I always give my feedback a week after the conference but I take notes during all the action is happening so I don't forget the important stuff later. Here's some notes that I've kept and wanted to share with everyone: 

- I was surprise on the number of Dynamics GP attendees this year. After the keynote session more than half stayed for the next session which was on the next version - Dynamics GP 2010.

- There's a new group of GP attendees and they're eager to contribute in the future of GP. This is critical as in the past attendees were just there to learn but now they want to contribute and put their skin in the game.

- In the past a lot of attendees spent their time going to basic sessions but now more went to Advanced sessions and also to Project Management sessions. Dale Carnegie came this year with different sorts of sessions on project management and it was well attended.

- New sessions from experts like the Support Debugging Tool which David Musgrave and Mariano Gomez hosted. This was well received and hopefully they come back next year with more.

- I saw old friends which I haven't seen in years including David Musgrave(Match Data days), Ayodale Cole (Cole Solutions), Frank Buckley and guys from Tectura who helped me implement GP in a NJ manufacturing.

- My favorite session this year was the one by New Orlean Saints coach Sean Payton. So much emotion during the session and you see his excitement in the coming season. He's very passionate about what he does, he cares for his players and he loves New Orleans.

- Other feedback:
    - The walk was too long from the food court to the sessions. So far this is the biggest in terms of area.
    - Food in the conference was ok, nothing to get excited. We tried Mary Mac Tea Room during one of our dinner and the ribs were incredible. Here's a pic of my plate:

    - Bus service was always available and when it's full you can get assurance from somebody that the next one is available....and it is.
   
- Lastly, Atlanta was a great host. I want to go back and visit the World of Coca-cola, CNN, Georgia Aquarium and others.

Sharepoint 2010 and SQL database mirroring

http://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2010/05/03/database-mirroring-in-sharepoint-2010.aspxHere's my first article on Sharepoint 2010, it's about creating a SQL database mirroring for the environment. Click here to read the article.

InfoView for Crystal Reports

Finally started working on publishing all my Crystal Reports to InfoView, a web application from Business Objects Enterprise (BOE).

Infoview runs on the web browser and is utilized to run and schedule Crystal Reports or any other report.

Business Intelligence experiences

During my 17-plus years of being a business owner or employee, I've had the opportunity to implement, feed, test or used a Business Intelligence (BI) product including Cognos, Microsoft's PerformancePoint Server Planning(discontinued) and now Business Objects. I like the look and feel of this product but wonder what will change in 2010 since SAP took over. Nowadays, database vendors provide Business Intelligence solutions in their product line and you can check vendors like SAS (Voted by Fortune as the top company to work for in 2010), Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and now SAP.

You can add value to your customers if you can implement a BI solution right on top of their ERP/SCM/CRM system.

Windows 7 is now the fastest selling OS

Last night at the CES 2010 keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Windows 7 has become the fastest selling operating system in history....read it here

Information Rights Management (IRM)

Here's an interesting article from Fahim Siddiqui, EVP of Intralinks, Inc. His article can help organizations in understanding the complexity of applying encryption and permissioning to corporate information. Read article here

Revenue and Expense Deferral

What is Revenue and Expense Deferral (RED)?

Revenue Deferral is considered a liability until it becomes relevant to the business at hand, such as a payment received for work that has not yet been performed. opposite of deferred charge. Expense Deferral refers to an item that will initially be recorded as an asset but is expected to become an expense over time and/or through the normal operation of the business.

Who can use this module?

Dynamics GP RED (Revenue and Expense Deferral) was designed for any company that needs to defer revenue or expense.

Let's say you're a media company with business in magazine publishing. You're offering your magazine subscription on a yearly, semi-annually or monthly (one-time) basis. When somebody subscribes to your magazine and pay a year subscription, you'll need to defer part of this subscription. At the end of the subscription period, you will have fulfilled your responsibility and the subscription will be fully realized as earned income.

How do I book a deferred entry from a Sales Invoice in Dynamics GP?

Once you have the sales invoice created, open the Distribution window select the account you want to defer then go to Extras>Additional>Deferral. Enter your Start and End dates, billing recognition account and choose your deferral method (Days Period, Equal Period and Miscellaneous).


Things to note when using this module:
- Deferred entries are always valued at functional currency
- You can only defer one invoice at a time
- Void Deferral Transactions can be utilize to void deferred entries only and have the original document like a Sales Invoice unvoided

There's room for improvement with this module including:
- Mass document deferral
- Audit-trail from a GL entry
- Multi-currency reporting based on originating document currency

To learn more about Revenue and Expense Deferral, you can visit RevenueRecognition.com

Get Customers with more than one address

Here's a simple SQL statement that I've used to help me resolve some of our issues be it customer, vendor or item master files:

Select custnmbr, Count(ADRSCODE) As AddressCount
From RM00102
Group By custnmbr
Having Count(ADRSCODE) > 1

or if you want detail use this

Select *
From RM00102
Inner Join (
Select CUSTNMBR, Count(ADRSCODE) As AddressCount
From RM00102
Group By CUSTNMBR
Having Count(ADRSCODE) > 1
) As A
On RM00102.CUSTNMBR = A.CUSTNMBR

SQL script to show last invoice detail of every customer

Copy and paste this to SQL Server Enterprise Manager:

select distinct a.custnmbr,a.LSTTRXDT,a.lsttrxam,b.sopnumbe
from rm00103 a
join sop30200 b
on a.custnmbr = b.custnmbr and
a.LSTTRXDT = b.docdate
/* show in ascending order */
order by custnmbr asc

Planning SQL Upgrade

So you finally decided to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 but it's been awhile since you looked at options for your Raid configurations. Here's a summary of what your options are:

Raid 0 - data is spread in different disk (disk stripping) but lacks redundancy
PROS - performs well on read and write
CONS - Failure of disk means data is lost
Raid 1 - known as disk mirroring no disk stripping. Data is hosted on a single drive then copied to another drive for fault tolerance. Recommended for Transaction Logs.
PROS - Redundant so failure of a drive will not stop database access
CONS - Cost since you'll need to double the size of your disk.

Raid 5 - uses disk stripping with parity. Data is spread but also stores parity information so it can be used in case of disk failure. Best for read-based not many write operations. Also avoid for transaction log because it's primarily sequential write.
PROS - Fault Tolerance at a low price.
CONS - Write Performance. Additional time is required to compute parity info before it's written to disk.

Raid 10 - cross between Raid 0 and 1. Data is striped evenly accross all drives then mirrored.
PROS - Write performance is far superior than Raid 5 and read performance is similar to Raid 5. Offers Fault Tolerance.
CONS - Cost since you'll need twice the number of disk like Raid 1.

SQL Wildcards

We implemented Multicurrency module and part of this implementation is changing the naming convention of our customers in Great Plains. We want to easily identify what kind of customer are they. Currently, our customer id ends in 001 so we decided to change it to whatever the contract currency is. So let's say ABC has a EURO contract with us then their customer id will then be ABCEUR instead of ABC001.

Our database is shared to other systems like our BI team to create relational DBs. A question came to my lap on the easiest way to segregate the customers based on their contract currency. We don't want to give them the Currency ID field as it's not consistent with other system. So I provided them with this Select statement:

Select * from RM00101
where custnmbr like '%[EUR]'

Proud Uncle

I'm so proud of my niece, Guia del Prado, that I wanted to congratulate her in my blog for being featured in her schools website - University of Nevada, Reno : www.unr.edu .

She's currently the news editor for the campus magazine - Insight.

Convergence 2009 update

Just came back from Convergence 2009 - New Orleans and found this year quite a disappointment as I didn't see a lot of value to the seminars, GP ver 11 and the future of products around Dynamics GP.

Here are my updates this year:

1) GP ver 11 - The presenter in the kiosk didn't show a lot of functionality as she said they're still finalizing the list but I like the option of printing a form to Microsoft Word which many of us had been requesting.
2) FRx - No goods new here as Microsoft announced last year Management Reporter will replace it. I found that Management Reporter lacks some functionality including XBRL (I hope they've resolve this already), etc. FRx support end on December 2010.
3) Forecaster - The big question - PerformancePoint or Dynamics?
4) CRM - There were a few seminars showing the new integration between this product and Dynamics GP. One presenter said it can now compete with vendors like Scribe.

I'll post more later....

FRx Error - Period not found

It's a new year and you just closed 2008 in Great Plains. You run FRx for the first period of the year and use /BB and @PERDESC header. The report will run without error but you're getting this - Period not found in Company Calendar, as the column header.

So what do you do? Download Microsoft FRx 6.7 Service Pack 10. Here are the links to download the file:

For GP Partners download here.

For GP Customers download here.

PPS Planning Discontinued by April 1,2009

A couple of emails I've received and feedback I've seen from different forums are not consistent with the announcement Microsoft gave last Friday and I want to clarify this.

The PerformancePoint Server 2007 is rebranded as PerformancePoint Services and will still be offered in the market as part of MOSS Enterprise. There are 3 components of the PPS server: Planning, Analytics and Monitoring (PAM). Of this 3 only Planning is discontinued while Analytics and Monitoring will be called PerformancePoint Services like Excel Services, Forms Services and Visio Services in the Sharepoint platform.

My favorite SQL Server sites

Data Mining http://www.sqlserverdatamining.com/ssdm/

Best Practice http://www.kimballgroup.com/

Reporting http://www.databasejournal.com/article.php/1459531 (William Pearson)

Integration http://www.sqlis.com/

Microsoft BI http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/business-intelligence.aspx

SQL Protocols http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/default.aspx

BI according to Microsoft

The Microsoft BI team presented the new BI stack to the New York Business Intelligence New York Meetup group yesterday. The first part of the presentation was the product demonstration then an open discussion on the product functionalities which got too detailed. A comparison of Excel 2007 and Proclarity was also in the table but was cut short because it was out of content. It was refreshing to see ProClarity working in harmony with PerformancePoint Server and MOSS.

To get more info about Microsoft BI click here. To join the New York Business Intelligence Meetup click here.

Microsoft Convergence 2009 New Orleans Announcements

If you're planning on attending Convergence this year please read this:

• Early Registration discount date has been extended to January 21, 2009. Save $300 by registering early, secure your favorite hotels while they are still available and take advantage of better airline rates.

• The session catalog (containing 225 sessions) is now live on the Convergence marketing site.
  

• The Convergence Customer Excellence Awards recognize, honor and celebrate customers who have achieved outstanding success with their Microsoft solutions as well as Microsoft partners' solutions. Customer Excellence Award nominations are now being accepted through January 20, 2009.

Microsoft Dynamics GP/SL HR/Payroll Offer

For Microsoft Dynamics GP customers licensed under Module Based Licensing Professional Edition or Business Ready Licensing: Receive up to 20% off on Human Resources and Payroll modules purchases over $5,000

For Microsoft Dynamics GP customers licensed under Module Based Licensing Standard Edition and Microsoft Dynamics SL customers licensed under Module Based Licensing or Business Ready Licensing: Receive up to 20% off on Human Resources and Payroll modules purchases over $3,000*

As an additional benefit, Microsoft Dynamics GP customers licensed under Module Based Licensing or Business Ready Licensing can receive up to a 20% discount on a PTO manager module purchase

Click HERE for more information

The End of GAAP Could Begin Next Year

The SEC suggests that some companies could forgo GAAP by the end of 2009, and that all companies may have to do the same by 2016.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has raised the possibility that some U.S. publicly traded companies will be able to use international financial reporting standards next year.

On Wednesday, the SEC commissioners proposed a timetable for transitioning all public companies from U.S. generally accepted accounting standards to IFRS within eight years, with the allowance for some companies to begin using the global rules earlier. If this so-called roadmap is approved, the SEC estimates that 110 companies would be eligible to use IFRS at the end of fiscal years ending after December 15, 2009, depending on their size and industry.

The roadmap further calls for the SEC to make a decision in 2011 regarding whether to require all of its registrants to use IFRS......click here for more

Error when using ProTools Item Combiner

Question: I am merging one item code to another. The item validates. I run the merge
and get an error "Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'IV10201' with
unique index 'AK3IV10201'."

If it's merging one code into another table, how could it possibly have key
violation since it's changing the code?

The same error is happening on every item I try.

Answer(from my friend Richard Whaley):
This is one of the headaches of combining items.

The IV10201 table is the purchase receipts. So, if Item A had a receipt and
Item B had a receipt, you are also combining the receipt list. This should
work EXCEPT...

The AK3IV10201 index is a unique index, meaning there can only be ONE entry
in the index with the same item number, receipt number, and receipt type.
So, if item A had a receipt #5 via PO and item B had are receipt #5 via PO,
you get this error.

How to fix it? you need to purge receiving history, something you might not
want to do.