Monthly Archives: July 2007

July 31, 2007 Posted in Business, Design, IT, New business, SaaS Leave a comment

SaaS for SaaS…

By Ben Kepes

News here of a JV designed to provide enabling for startup SaaS businesses. A good example of business 2.0. Smart, dynamic and organic partnerships that provide enabling for others with smart business ideas. In the absence of big hitters to give advice, capital and developmental nous, this is a great

July 31, 2007 Posted in Business, Economic Development, New Zealand, Society 4 Comments

Burger Fuel and uninformed investors….

By Ben Kepes

Check this out. BF market cap plummets simply through the sale of $1000 shares. Apparently a number of investors paid for their shares with credit cards. Sheesh – I can’t believe how New Zealanders could go onto an IPO like this without proper assessment. I liken it to the current

July 31, 2007 Posted in Uncategorized 4 Comments

August Unlimited Mag….

By Ben Kepes

Unlimited Magazine have asked me to write a regular piece about my take on being in business here in New Zealand. The August issue just came out and it’s looking great (my own article aside). Unlimited is a great magazine, I’ve enjoyed reading it for years and am pleased and

July 30, 2007 Posted in Business, Economic Development, Efficiency, Governance, New Zealand, Society, Strategy, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Dubai and Auckland airport….

By Ben Kepes

Does anyone else out there cringe at the diatribe currently spinning around regarding the proposed acquisition of Auckland International Airport by a UAE based entity? It seems to me yet another example of good old Kiwi tall poppy syndrome/xenophobia/parochialism. For the record; No one here complains when Graham Hart buys

July 29, 2007 Posted in Business, Business and the Environment, Compliance, Economic Development, Manufacturing, New Zealand, Society, Strategy 2 Comments

Are our heads in the sand….

By Ben Kepes

A friend (OK OK a facebook contact) sent me this link. Without being all right wing and going on and on about how ACT was sent here to save our souls (god forbid!) it does have to be said that some of the dichotomies mentioned on the page are indeed

July 28, 2007 Posted in Design, IT, Society 2 Comments

Where is email heading….

By Ben Kepes

Seth has a great post over here asking if email is on it’s way out. The gist of the post is that email is very web1.0 and will eventually be superseded by something bigger, better and more web based (which sounds a little counter intuitive). Or at least something more

July 27, 2007 Posted in Business, Efficiency, Governance, New business, Strategy Leave a comment

Is big always better???

By Ben Kepes

An excellent post here by Will Schroeter who questions the view that it’s always better to own a small piece of a big business than a big piece of a small business. Will concludes that often it’s better to keep growing a closely held small enterprise as the returns outweigh

July 27, 2007 Posted in Business, Design, Governance, IT, Strategy 1 Comment

Telcos are becoming service-centric too…

By Ben Kepes

British Telecom’s recently announced first quarter performance: Revenue £5 billion Increase of 3% Growth from BT Global Services was key contributor BT is pushing itself as a service-centric organisation bundling service products and systems to deliver WHAT THEIR CUSTOMERS WANT It’s an important change that will continue to gain momentum

July 27, 2007 Posted in Business, Economic Development, IT, New business, New Zealand, SaaS, Strategy Leave a comment

SaaS goes mainstream….

By Ben Kepes

I’m really going to have to find something new to blog about. Here I was thinking that SaaS was sufficiently esoteric and “backroom” to keep me a little aloof and what happens?, NZTE does a SaaS expose in its magazine. The July/August edition of bright, the NZTE hat tip to

July 27, 2007 Posted in Business, Governance, New business, New Zealand, Strategy Leave a comment

Burger fuel IPO undercooked….

By Ben Kepes

Only $5.25mill of the $15mill on offer were subscribed for the Burger Fuel IPO. The founders have split the difference to make it to the $8mill minimum listing requirement. Compare for a minute the Burger Fuel and Xero IPO’s. Xero’s was traditional and professional, BF’s quirky and novel. Sorry guys

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.