The traditional software ecosystem model is comprised of a few large technology companies supported by many smaller players in long-term, one-to-one, or one-to-many relationships. Technology giants have independent software vendor (ISV) partner alliances or go-to-market programs where ISVs sign up, try to fit in to the company’s ecosystem, and make an impact. This model can be costly and unpredictable because there are no guarantees for success or long-term viability. Companies are wed to these stacks as their only options, unless they are willing to risk going out of the ecosystem.
Cloud and digital ecosystems are evolving in very different ways that are good for customers, but more complex and strategically difficult to navigate for ISVs. The rate of change and innovation is much faster than in the past, given the extensibility of cloud architectures. For customers, this creates new opportunities for creating differentiated capabilities, but it can also lead to complex, multi-cloud, and on-premise architectures that require significant expertise and ongoing support to stay ahead. For ISVs, this new world is packed with great opportunity, yet fraught with competitive threats and high stakes to stay on top.
Deloitte’s Influence on the Ecosystems
Deloitte Digital engages with leading ecosystem players as an architect to shape and drive the makeup of these ecosystems. Our deep technical and industry experience, coupled with our world-class creative and design capabilities, allow us to bring unique and differentiated solutions to market. This combination can create extraordinary value in terms of capabilities, go-to-market strategy, and lower cost of ownership.
Through the power of the ecosystem, Deloitte helps tech giants and leading ISVs explore opportunities to collaborate with a CloudMix or Digital Marketing Hub-type approach. The CloudMix solution by Deloitte Digital creates a progressive and strategic view of the ecosystem to provide customer-specific, end-to-end capabilities. With Salesforce as the anchor, CloudMix has included a long list of best-of-breed, and in some cases competing, ISVs into preconfigured, pre-integrated solutions for sectors such as technology, healthcare, life sciences, and banking.
Deloitte Digital also influences the digital cloud ecosystems with our Deloitte Digital Marketing Hub. The Digital Marketing Hub harnesses the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform to provide marketers with a holistic view of a campaign's marketing strategy, customer engagement, content and creative, execution, analytics, and data management.
Apple and Deloitte recently announced a partnership to help companies quickly and easily transform the way they work by maximizing the power, ease-of-use, and security the iOS platform brings to the workplace through iPhone and iPad. As part of the joint effort, Deloitte is creating a first-of-its-kind Apple practice with over 5,000 strategic advisors who are solely focused on helping businesses change the way they work across their entire enterprise, from customer-facing functions such as retail, field services, and recruiting, to R&D, inventory management, and back-office systems.
Deloitte’s Strategy to Manage Our Ecosystems
We continue to select and strategically align with the leading digital and cloud players such as Salesforce, Adobe, Medallia, Mulesoft, CloudCraze, NetSuite, Sprinklr, and many others. We have developed leading practices and playbooks on how to build cross-platform capabilities and alliances, including key areas such as training and talent, pipeline management, opportunity development, solution development, and partner enablement. ISVs sign up to be in the Deloitte ecosystem and train our practitioners to effectively use their products and actively engage in their organizations. Building these ecosystem models requires more than just good ideas and a white board. It requires investment and real work—and an undying focus on customer value first.
To deliver increasing value to Deloitte customers in the digital age of tomorrow, where relationships become multi-dimensional and increasingly complex, it’s fundamentally important that we develop mutual, beneficial relationships with leading ecosystem players. Together, with leading industry processes and end-to-end capabilities, we can help clients navigate this fast-changing market and maximize the business value of their technology investments.
Paul Clemmons leads the Salesforce Global Alliance and Service Line at Deloitte and is responsible for strategy, operations, and leadership alignment within Deloitte.
Dreamforce 2016
Paul Clemmons, Global Salesforce Practice Leader with Deloitte Digital, will speak during the session “The Future of the Cloud Ecosystem with Deloitte Digital” along with Alex Sasieta, Digital Customer Director at Deloitte Consulting LLP; Liz Herbert, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester; David Chao, head of industry solutions at MuleSoft; and Ray Grady, EVP at CloudCraze. The talk will be 10 to10:40 a.m., Thursday, October 6.