Archive for the 'Business' Category

Spreading the Telco Love Around

Published by Ben Kepes on October 8, 2008 in Business, IT, New Zealand and SaaS. 4 Comments

I like to spread the love around the telcos - the other day I posted about the cool Vodafone forum offering that really answer the needs of their own particular community of interest. Today it’s the turn of Telecom to get some bouquets.

Telecom have just reviewed all their broadband offerings and I have to say the results are pretty appealing - basically the full line speed (unconstrained both up and down) options have come down a price point or two, while the data caps have increased across the board - sure we could focus on locations with better broadband than us but I prefer to congratulate on progress and encourage further movement.

As the NBR details;

the $99 max/max 30GB Advance plan and $149 max/max 40GB UltraPro plans have been killed off, their position in Telecom Broadband’s foodchain now surplanted (sic) by a revamped $79.95 Pro plan that offers max/max speed and a 40GB cap.

Max/max speed now kicks in on Telecom Broadband’s $49.95 plan, formerly, constrained to 128Mbit/s upload. Your $49.95 now also buys you double the data, with the capped expanded to 10GB.

A $29.95 plan will remain for those willing to live without max/max speed, with its data cap doubled to 500MB.

Telecom Broadband’s business plans – all already max/max – have also had their data caps expanded. Its entry-level $59.95 plan has had its cap raised from 3GB to 15GB; it’s $79.95 more than doubles to 40GB, and its $109.95 plan doubles to 60GB.

None of the plans offer naked DSL; all are tied to a Telecom landline. Those on $99 and $149 Telecom Broadband plans will be automatically put on a $79.95 Pro plan by Telecom Broadband.

What’s cool to see is that Telecom are, in part, paying for these price drops through increased usage of local caching of files through Akamai - it’s a good, fast and efficient temporary solution to the constraints of limited international bandwidth.

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Zoho – Another Approach to Sustainable Growth

Published by The Unreasonablemen on October 7, 2008 in Business, IT, New business and Strategy. 0 Comments

Phil Wainewright put up a very thought provoking post the other day, speculating if Zoho could outgrow Salesforce.com. A worthwhile read, the stand out bit being his summation;

A disruptive model? Just as Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff dismisses conventional software vendors such as Oracle and SAP as dinosaurs on the verge of extinction, so Vembu looks on Salesforce.com’s high-cost, premium-priced model (in comparison to Zoho’s) as a throwback to the days of old-fashioned enterprise software….. Meanwhile, Zoho’s decision not to turn to advertising as a source of revenue is also appropriate for the business market and a useful differentiator against Google, the other big player making headway in that mass SMB sector. On balance, Zoho’s model offers enough value to an under-served market to qualify as disruptive and its state of preparedness for a difficult economic environment could well see it emerge the other side of the coming recession as a leading player.

This got me thinking… So far most of the we dialogue on financial models has been based around a number of streams.

Freemium models seem to be getting the most coverage. I was never that impressed (Ben has a good piece here on why) and with the credit crunch I’m even less inclined to believe in this. To be honest I’d be amazed to see this one survive the credit crunch

Advertising supported - Google is the poster child. Fairly self-explanatory how it works.

Traditional pay as you go models – Salesforce.com There is another way to get scale, then monetise Internet assets, funnily enough it’s a variant on the Google model and is being used by Zoho. This approach is to use an existing revenue engine to fund the growth of the start-up, in Zoho’s case it is parent company AdventNet who are funding the Zoho development. The interesting dynamic here is the financial impacts. No debt and organic growth build rock-solid stability. I don’t believe people fully understand the economics at play here. The scale challenges a startup have to conquer are enormous, but when they get there the marginal costs plummet and accordingly your profits go up.  Check this from Zoho.

Google and Microsoft have clearly reached scale (in their own markets), Salesforce.com hasn’t… yet. I’m told that their PaaS play is starting to really reap benefits, huge customers signing up, customers putting Tb’s of Data thru a day. All driving economies of scale.

Getting back to Zoho, the more I look at it, the more I like the model. Self fund to scale, charge for premium services, consider a slow introduction of pay as you go later (I’d put in an easy migration path for those who aren’t ever going to pay) and above all keep it scaling. We see Amazon’s mantra all over again, ‘GBF’ “Get Big Fast”, but without the debt and with a fairly logical path to monetisation.

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A Journey of A Thousand Miles

Published by Ben Kepes on October 6, 2008 in Business, Collaboration, New Zealand, SocialMedia and Strategy. 1 Comment

Subsequent to TelecomONE over the weekend, and after a session discussing the social media activities of Telecom employees - some issues became evident.

I’ve always been impressed that Vodafone New Zealand allow (and, I assume, encourage) Paul Brislen, their PR man, to participate in social media - be it on Geekzone, Twitter or this blog.

There has always been a stark contrast between themselves and Telecom New Zealand. I have at least half a dozen friends (yes I consider you friends :-) ) within TNZ who are actively engaged in social media - add to that the number of ex-TNZ employees are who were during their TNZ days. All of these people who participate do so anonymously.

At TelecomONE, Telecom high flier Alan Gourdie personally undertook to address this anomaly. Big ups to Alan for both fronting up and making the undertaking.

Even bigger ups to Neil Forster - Neil was the main organiser of TelecomONE, who put his heart and soul into the event. Until now he’s always blogged and twittered anonymously - but I was stoked to read this morning him publicly out himself.

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Marketing 101 (and so sad that it’ll probably work)

Published by Ben Kepes on October 6, 2008 in Business, IT, New Zealand, New business, SocialMedia, Society and Strategy. 1 Comment

I just got forwarded the following email;

Sam added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know Sam in order for you to be friends on Facebook.
Sam says, "Www.smcreative.co.nz
is a multi - disciplined Graphic Design/ contemporary art company based in New Zealand. I don’t know who you are, as I am trying to get my website out there.
cheers,
Sam.".

Apart from the fact that brand building via a social network is marginally effective - it’s pretty amazing to think that someone would actually try and "friend" a complete stranger in order to further their fledgling business - and in the same line to ‘fess up to not actually knowing them.

The really sad thing about this is that the lust to amass a large number of "friends" on Facebook is such that this guy will probably be rivaling Robert Scoble pretty soon.

It’s a sad world huh?

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