Artists and SaaS Vendors are Not Created Equal

The Creation of Adam fresco by Michelangelo

One of the most iconic images from all works of art is The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, part of his Sistine Chapel ceiling frescos in the Vatican. Learn more about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel frescos in this video. I saw the Sistine Chapel frescos and many other works of art while backpacking through Europe as a student. It was very interesting to learn and see how the Renaissance transformed Europe in all of the arts and sciences, and laid the foundation of the world we live in today.

I think the greatest advancement during the Renaissance was the invention of the printing press, which dramatically increased the dissemination of knowledge and ideas. The same thing is happening now at a far greater scale with the Internet; we can now learn almost anything online. Furthermore, there is yet another advancement occurring now: the ability to run business applications online from almost anywhere.

Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Artists and works of art are not equal. Studying art helps us to understand why some works and artists are considered great, while others are not. Forrester analyst Boris Evelson provides similar insights about BI SaaS vendors in this post, “BI SaaS Vendors are Not Created Equal.” He provides excellent criteria for evaluating BI SaaS vendors, and most of his suggestions apply to any type of enterprise SaaS application.

Although it’s good to evaluate art based on our own experience and criteria, we learn more quickly and thoroughly from formal study. The same is true for evaluating enterprise SaaS applications, which are new advancements in our quest that began in the Renaissance for more information more quickly to more people. Consider these enterprise SaaS applications that are among the best works of modern art:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Attensity360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

The Last Judgement fresco by Michelangelo

As an enterprise application artist at your organization, what would you focus on if you were asked to create a “fresco” of cloud-based applications to improve knowledge, insights, and business performance?