Archive for January, 2008

Thoughts on SaaS - Is it here to stay?

SearchCIO.com asked it’s readers their views on whether SaaS s a pssing fad, or if it’s here to stay. They also ask whether SaaS is yet another ASP and will go the same, unsuccesful, way. Some good responses, including one from our very own Paul Quickenden who said;

My personal view is that SaaS will survive the hype cycle. I think this for several reasons:

1. The ASP value proposition was much more limited than SaaS. People are buying SaaS for the value it adds. ASP was always an outsourcing deal designed to cut costs.

2. The decisions on buying SaaS are in the business mostly, meaning people buy SaaS because they use it; most other software purchases are different — people use software because they’ve bought it.

3. The flexibility of the subscription model allows a much more flexible adoption approach.

4. Finally, ASPs were undifferentiated; SaaS providers actually have different propositions, fulfilling different needs.

Couldn’t agree more PQ - Vive la difference!

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A place where people in business meet…..

Or women people anyway.

My key word for the internet is aggregation. I believe a web presence can provide a forum where material from diverse sources can be aggregated, where people can congregate and communications can occur both between people and between resources and people.

I’m working on a few projects around this space at the moment and I was interested to read of a new site, Entrepreneuette, which has been set up. It’s a community site for women in business and according to the site it allows its members to;

Promote your business:

Tell us about your business (promote your products or services, grow your network or make a valuable contact)

Network:

You can join (or start) groups on topics that are of interest to you, to ask questions, offer your advice or generally join the dialogue of sharing and motivating and helping other women in business

Raise your profile:

Keep your own blog to share with us your rants and raves, your highs and lows, track your goals and progress (and receive some encouragement in return!) and share your business experiences and learnings with us. (Each one; teach one - Bob Marley)

Be inspired:

Read our entrepreneurette magazine; designed to inspire and motivate you in business. Or contribute articles yourself; share your story, your expertise and build your own profile!

Learn:

Take your business to another level with our six month entrepreneurette program; 12 practical modules covering essential business and self development topics with a lesson, assignment, quiz and resources - with your own online study group for support.

Get peer support and encouragement:

Join in regular live mastermind group sessions to brainstorm and exchange goals, successes and business obstacles - because no woman is an island! No travel required; participate from the comfort of your home or office!

Attend online events:

Receive invitations to online events: live webinars to be inspired by stories of other successful women in business and guest mentor-panels for your opportunity to ask your burning questions. No travel required; put your feet up and relax with your wine/coffee from the comfort of your home/office!

 

It will be interesting to see how much momentum the site build, Xero is sponsoring it (the site visitors are, after all, likely to be perfect customer fodder for Xero’s own product offering). It’s been started by Fiona Powell, founder of Her Business magazine, so should grow to include all the necessities that the space demands.

 

Best of luck Fiona (and the entrepreneurette gang!)

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Fronde feeling some pain…

I’ve had a little bit to do with a few of the Fronde blog rats (not rats in a derogatory term - one of endearment only!)

Their recently departed CEO, Jim Donovan, is a blogger of high regard (check out his blog) and a number of Fronde insiders (including the irrepressible MiramarMike)are blogging buddies as well.

I know very little however about the business itself. A recent comment on Jim’s blog from “angry shareholder” begs some questions. The comment went;

Good god man!! No wonder you’re leaving. Look at the result. The buck has to stop with you.

You couldn’t run bath, let alone a company!!!

I hope “things you want to do” doesn’t involve some other poor company.

Obviously it’s a way to extreme comment but it is in reaction to Fronde’s announced loss of $2.87 million on flat operating revenue of $16.9 million. Revenue was almost identical the previous financial year when the company recorded a profit of $647,000.

Jim responded exceptionally well (considering he’s left Fronde) by saying;

I absolutely understand your anger - I’m a shareholder myself. It happened on my watch and I’m responsible. We went for growth and we didn’t get it. But I think we reacted quickly when it became apparent, and the recovery plan we put in place is already delivering a significant improvement. However, that won’t make the first half figures any more acceptable.

Now I’m sure that Jim’s leaving Fronde has nothing to do with the lack of results - he’s helped put in place a plan to restructure, reduce costs and return to profitability next year. But it does however show the scrutiny that being captian of a publicly listed company brings to an individual.

Have a well earned break Jim!

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Renaissance loses it’s monopoly position…

News that Apple has revisited its distribution model in New Zealand and has pulled the exclusivity that Renaissance group has/had for Apple products.

Two issues to discuss here - Lance has already posted congratulating Apple’s move saying that;

…I have to say that I’m glad. Their service was really not up to scratch, and they lost my business to the online store the day it opened.

Lance’s comment (and similar anecdotal evidence I’ve seen from elsewhere) suggest that Renaissance merely rode on the coat tails of Apple’s ascendancy here in New Zealand. They enjoyed increased sales through a higher level of “brand equity” (thanks Paul for seeding that little term!), without rally adding any value for consumers, or even providing a level of service commensurate with the design (and price) of the products they were selling.

On a second note, and to balance the brickbat, I have to say that Renaissance have been smart. They could see Apple’s move coming and have placed themselves well to be a diversified operation without relying completely on Apple product sales. In the past year or so they have invested in other businesses, mst notable buying New Zealand wide retailer MagnumMac and design/technology education provider NatColl.

The MagnumMac acquisition gives them some protection from other sales channels for Apple products by having a good degree of vertical integration. The NatColl purchase gives them a well diversified revenue stream in a high growth area and one which (as a bonus) is a high user of the Apple products and services that they still sell.

So both brickbats and bouquets for Renaissance today!

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EBay lowers listing fees…

I’ve always said that EBay could do even more business if they ditched listing fees and derived most of their revenue from add-ons and success fees.

In New Zealand, the largest online auction business, TradeMe, accounts for over a third of total web traffic here! This on the back of zero listing fees.

News just in that Ebay will cut its listing fees by around 50% and make the lost revenue up by increasing success fees. They should have done it earlier!

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Fully featured, SaaS delivered, SME software package

I’ve just come across 24sevenoffice, a European based SaaS product for SMEs. 24sevenoffice seems to have unprecedented breadth of functionality. It includes;

  • Accounting
  • CRM (Contacts, Lead Mgt, SFA)
  • Web conferencing functionality (via Webex)
  • ERP (Supply Chain, Orders, Products, Inventory)
  • Communication
  • Group Calendaring
  • HR
  • Project Management

Thus far it would seem 24sevenoffice suffers from one of the biggest barriers to cross border uptake of SaaS ERP, that is varying taxation and regulatory standards. Thus far 24sevenoffce is available only in Europe.

They seem to be rolling out some of the value added features that Xero is also utilising such as automated daily feeds from bank accounts to save time and hassle reconciling accounts.

A flash demo of their offering can be seen here.

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Humanware gives up on New Zealand…

I’m not going to comments at length on this one but… here we go again

Humanware, until very recently held up as the quintessential New Zealand hi tech success story, is shutting up shop in New Zealand and relocating offshore.

Someone remind me where the domestic benefit is derived when a company is sold offshore, moves it’s manufacturing offshore and does it’s R&D offshore?

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The story of stuff…

A friend sent me a link to this site which headlines an animated movie looking at our collective mass consumerism model.

While a diatribe against consumption is somewhat outside of the usual subject matter of this blog, and arguably somewhat opposed to things I write about (yep - that sexy new MacBookAir is another example of perceived obsolescence that is one of the energy sources for the consumer society), I’d like to think the life I lead is at least a little balanced in terms of total foot print.

It’s tempting to turn this post around and say that in fact SaaS is a more environmentally friendly way of delivering software (and it is - more energy efficient, less hardware demands at the user end yada yada yada), but that would be somewhat opportunistic.

So what do the readers think - is our focus on things tech yet another addition to consumer society or are there ways that tech can help”cure the disease” (if indeed the contention is correct that consumer-itis is an affliction)

There endeth my shade-of-green post for the day.

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Headlines scream - Cop and porn…

But the reality is (as is often the case) different.

Seems a school cop in Florida set up a MySpace page in order to “connect” more with the kids within the school where he worked. As is the norm for social networking sites, he friended a number of people from his school. One of those “friends” had a link on his profile to, you guessed it, a porn site.

The St. Peterburg Times puts it in suitably emotive terms saying that “kids could navigate from Officer John’s page on the social networking site to ‘Amateur Match Free Sex’ in just three clicks.” So big deal says I. Officer John wasn’t posting porn, links to porn or any references to pornographic material.

There is about as much guilt attributable to this poor guy as there is to me when someone Googles “diversity” and comes across sites detailing bestiality and necrophilia. I mean come on here, the internet is made up of three syllables. One of those syllables is “net” short for “network” - in the case of the web we’re all only a few degrees removed from terrorists, murderers or worse. What legitimacy is there for attributing guilt to those whose social graph includes undesirable people or behaviours.

Some people need to get a sense of perspective. Methinks the ones complaining about these sorts of event are those that are scared of the empowering attributes of the web.

Thoughts anyone else?

If your IT department gave you the option, would you chose for business use;

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Firefox mobile… cool!

Wired posted about the design concepts for Firefox’s mobile browser that they’ve seen. Firefox is my browser of choice and seeing it go mobile would be another great step down the road of seeing content whenever you like - regardless of the platform it sits upon.

I’m looking forward to seeing usable versions of Firefox mobile soon.

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