I am thinking about going to a coffee shop this afternoon. I work at coffee shops quite a bit. I can go there and get my work done just as easily as in my home. Doing a call at my favorite coffee shop, Albina Press,  can be a bit difficult but for the most part the atmosphere suits me well. I can meet my geek friends there, talk about new apps we are using, see what they doing.

Developers go to coffee shops. Entrepreneurs who are building startups spend a lot of time in coffee shops.  A lot of deals are made over Americanos and lattes.

You know where we don’t go?

Country clubs.

They are irrelevant. Why? We don’t make the kind of money that would allow us to even get past the entrance. Even if I did have that kind of cash, I would never consider it. Country clubs don’t represent who we are or how we work.  We would never go to a country club to make a deal. We don’t make those kind of deals. We don’t buy the multi-million dollar “solutions” that IT used to purchase. The glory days of enterprise IT are over. What does an app cost now? A few dollars. A SaaS offering may cost you $20 to $30 per month. Some are more expensive but you get the picture. Those are things you can use or purchase online while enjoying some espresso at the coffee shop.

The country club deals are dead. Just ask Dennis Howlett and Ray Wang who summed it up pretty well this week at the SAP United Kingdom User Group meeting this week in Birmingham, England.

Here’s their full discussion.

In the context of SAP, there’s a new reality that seems to be sifting into the culture. Like more enterprise technology providers, they are starting to understand some basic tenets. The app has to be simple. It has to scale and you better believe that it has to be sexy. As Ray says, it also has to be secure and not totally blow up existing systems.

But you should not need an instruction manual.

Wang says the pendulum is swinging. The business groups have more sway in technology decisions. IT is seeing a 5% decrease in year over year budgets. But technology spending is up 18 to 20%. IT is getting squeezed and the business groups are buying tech.

SAP has to get deeper into the game that developers play. SAP is developing “situation style apps,” as Howlett describes it. But they have to do more. Expensify and Zora are building edge apps. Companies like these are capturing people’s attention. These are point apps that SAP should be addressing.

Do Systems Integrators Get It?

Survival in this world will come down to building relationships with individuals and business groups who demand choice and flexibility. A top-down, solutions approach does not work. Systems integrators (SI) have relied on working with IT to build these solutions. Wang says the new reality is about SIs making their own intellectual property. Snazzy apps that leverage lots of data that can be analyzed on the fly.

Appirio an Blue Wolf are service providers of this new breed. Some veterans, like Cap Gemini, which have adopted Agile, are starting to see the difference a more coffee shop approach can do. That means SIs need to align with the business groups.

It’s time to hang out at the coffee shop. The country club deals are over.

Photo Credit: Chuggin McCoffee