Monthly Archives: March 2008

March 30, 2008 Posted in IT, SaaS Leave a comment

Another Xero partner…

By Ben Kepes

Xero has another API partner, this time ITLink, a provider of mobile sales force tools specifically; SalesLink Mobile – a mobile order taking solution SalesLink Surveys – a mobile survey management tool Stocklink Mobile – A mobile stocktaking tool As well as some mobile sales reporting tools that all allow

Tagged xero api |

March 30, 2008 Posted in Collaboration, Design, IT, SaaS, Web x.0 Leave a comment

Zoho filling in the SME accounting space?

By Ben Kepes

A few weeks ago I posted and said; Next move I’m picking [for Zoho] is a filling out of the space between the current small business offerings and People, the first larger business offering. That remark was particularly made to comment on the release of Zoho’s first offering that seemed

Tagged accounting, crm, SaaS, Zoho |

March 28, 2008 Posted in Coffee, Economic Development, New Zealand, Society Leave a comment

The $60000 coffee…

By Ben Kepes

The inimitable Bernard Hickey posted this video explaining compounding, debt repayment and the vagaries of coffee consumption! Check it out…

March 28, 2008 Posted in Efficiency, IT, SaaS, Strategy Leave a comment

New Xero release out…

By Ben Kepes

A new release for Xero and some moves to overcome the stickiness of MYOB and ease the conversion pain for new users. I’ve always said that SaaS vendors need to think long and hard about inward migration strategies to ensure uptake is facilitated as much as possible. The changes rolled

Tagged Xero |

March 28, 2008 Posted in Design, Efficiency, IT, SaaS Leave a comment

SaaS commentator gets a lashing…

By Ben Kepes

An interesting opinion piece by Michael A. Braun of Intacct, a SaaS ERP/Financial company, looks at traditional installed application suites, claiming that they are “yesterday’s news”. More interesting is the response it generated. The article is interesting, framed very much as a PR flier, but with some interesting points nonetheless.

March 28, 2008 Posted in Economic Development, Governance, IT, New business, New Zealand, Society, Strategy 2 Comments

When bureaucracy goes wrong…

By Ben Kepes

I’ve written in the past about the good things that New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the Government’s enterprise development body, does for New Zealand business. They have a large variety of programmes, all aimed at helping New Zealand business excel on an international level. I was pretty disappointed to read

March 28, 2008 Posted in IT, My businesses, SaaS, Strategy 6 Comments

ICT Outsourcing conference over…

By Ben Kepes

I’m sitting at Auckland airport waiting for my flight home after an interesting two days at the ICT Outsourcing conference. My presentation was entitled “The Place of Software as a Service (SaaS) Within An Enterprise”, and I think it went off well. I had a number of responses from attendees

March 27, 2008 Posted in Governance, IT, PaaS, SaaS, Strategy 2 Comments

Security concerns a barrier to SaaS uptake

By Ben Kepes

An interesting post on RWW this morning asks whether Facebook for business use is really going to happen. Josh correctly points out that Facebook is already being used by business operatives, they’re just using it for their personal networks rather than business ones. Josh went on to point out that

March 26, 2008 Posted in Web x.0 Leave a comment

3 quick lessons to keep you up to play with Enterprise 2.0

By Mike Riversdale

(cross posting from Mike Riversdale: Enterprise 2.0 New Zealand style blog) Basic A great list of “Web 2.0″ definitions from Miraz that we people that live on the Web use all the time but may confuse and intimidate those that don’t know. As Miraz ably demonstrates, most of the words

March 26, 2008 Posted in IT, New Zealand, Society 1 Comment

Sorry to labour the point but…

By Ben Kepes

Conference venue (charging the conference organiser heaps no doubt) – 1 hour broadband $5 Hotel (charging the conference organiser $150/night for me to stay) – 1 hour broadband $10 Esquires cafe – 1 flat white (admittedly not fantastic but anyway) and 1 hour broadband $4.30 And we all blame Telecom

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.