Response from: Randy Littleson    (02/13/08 9:17pm)

Our Response Management solution - which empowers people to respond to supply chain changes - is delivered as an on-demand service today.

We sell to large manufacturers across a variety of verticals. We're seeing extremely strong interest in on-demand as companies continue to outsource much of their IT infrastructure.

Very importantly, our on-demand service provides exactly the same full functionality as our prior on-premises offering. It is not a first generation solution with limited capabilities - so we don't encounter that obstacle.

You are correct in that some people are initially concerned about data - but when they stop and think about how much data is already outside their walls because of the pervasive outsourcing they've done, they get much more comfortable with an on-demand service. In fact, a huge value that we provide is the ability to actually regain visibility into that outsourced data because that is critical to enabling effective response to change.

I don't disagree that some vendors will take a different approach to offering an on-demand service and run into issues - but it doesn't have to be that way.

I think the market will be "mature" much sooner than 10 years, I think we're at the early stages of a very strong demand that will become mainstream inside of 5 years.

Response from: ehsan    (02/14/08 10:55am)

Hi Randy,

Thanks or your comment. I will be happy if you send me your point of views about SOS market to me.

Best
Ehsan

Response from: Arthur    (02/27/08 8:34am)

One thing about web applications: they are usually much slower than "green screen". A key prerequisite will be to have the necessary bandwidth from server to PC that allows fast uploading and scrolling of screens. We jusst implemented an ERP solution, and none of the "working level" people wanted to use the HTML-similar version, rather all preferred the "green screen" (though most have changed the color) due to speed.