Yesterday I queried the Facebook strategy of owning it’s own datacentre infrastructrue - especially given it’s (hoped for) growth and the prevalence of other scalable, cloud based third party hosting solutions.
Henry Blodget asks another question in this post this morning. The main thrust of his post is that the MS deal last year valued Facebook at $15bill. The easiest for them to pay for the hardware they need would be to flip off a little more stock in return for cash. Henry contends that the reason they’re borrowing (which puts all the shareholders at risk if Facebook ever loses value) is that they’re not able to sell equity at the sort of valuation they need to to avoid people getting fearful that the entire business was over-hyped.
Short term it’s no big deal, but at some stage the shareholder will start to squirm that debt keps being taken on to fund growth. Very soon the wolves will start baying demanding either;
- A clear monetisation path (and at the sort of rates that are commensurate with the valuation)
- An equity sell down (which needs to realistically be at least at the most recent sell down valuation
Both of these options are hard to envisage in the current climate.
I’ve just read that Facebook have just raised USD100mill all to “invest” in new servers. Apparently they’re going to move from the 10k current to 50k servers. Questions;
- 40k servers costing $100 million. That’s UD2500 per server. Sure there are some related real estate and infrastructure costs but this seems pretty excessive (especially at the sort of deals FB must get for hardware)
- Given that they’re spending this sort of money, why don’t they just move to a cloud computing model? Fact is if they’re to continue to grow (and they don’t seem to share my scepticism abut that), they’ll need to be able to scale their infrastructure. They need something elastic, self hosting doesn’t give that degree of elasticity
- Seems like a bit of a strategy straight out of legacy business models to me
Firstly I need to say that I’m not in the camp that heralds the iPhone as a world changing, cure for cancer sort of a device. I do however think it’s cool, and now that enterprise users are seeing the functionality that they need, there is no reason to think that iPhones won’t start to replace RIM devices en masse. After all enterprise users generally use other consumer devices (iPods and the like) so the iPhone concept makes sense to them on an emotional level.
Interesting to see that RIM is trying to hit back with the release of its latest Blackberry device.
Also interesting to see that Microsoft and RIM have inked a deal to see Windows Live services enabled on RIM devices (messenger and hotmail).
The move makes sense for both MS and RIM who are both concerned about the threat from Apple. But at the end of the day it comes down to user comfort and enjoyment. The Blackberry is an austere device that reeks of command lines, greenscreen monitors and tape drives when compared to the iPhone which is sleek and fun.
But remember that I don’t work in a corporate (and to be honest don’t have either an iPhone or a RIM device, but donations gratefully accepted), so lets see what the real world out there thinks;
Loading ...
Cisco has just released the latest in its TelePresence line of products that allow “total immersion” video and audio conferencing. Obviously video conferencing fills needs both in terms of environmental impact of travel, and time constraints of users. I was pretty excited to see the pictures, it looks like a cool offering.
I then made the mistake of looking at the pricing on what is essentially a few big LCD screens, some high quality microphones and speakers and an underlying software offering. Pricing on the Cisco offerings are as follows;
The Cisco TelePresence System 500 has a list price of $33,900 USD; the Cisco TelePresence 3200 has a list price of $340,000 USD. Both ship in the third calendar quarter of 2008. A $90,000 USD list Cisco TelePresence System 3200 upgrade kit is also available for Cisco TelePresence System 3000 customers.
I have to say that Skype (even with a bit of drop out from time to time) is starting to look better and better!
Last week at Dreamforce Europe 08 Coda Group launched Coda2Go - an SaaS accounting application that runs on the Force.com platform.
In their press release they note:
- Powerful international on-demand accounting application from one of Europe’s leading financial systems providers
- Biggest ever development project on Force.com Platform-as-a-Service
- First accounting application designed from inception to integrate with Salesforce CRM applications
It’s certainly the biggest Force.com app I’ve seen, most of which to date have been feature add-ons for Salesforce.com rather than full blown applications in their own right.
Release 1 of Coda2Go is called Opportunity to Cash and continues Salesforce’s process which ends at converted opportunities and carries on through credit management, invoicing, accounts receivable, ageing and collections, and cash allocation.
One of the advantages which I haven’t seen mentioned is the ability to extend the app and potentially integrate with other Force.com apps you use. But the biggest drawback seems to be the price. Initial pricing is a whopping $125 per user per month. Their target market however is customers who are already willing to pay a healthy price for Salesforce.com itself.
At the moment I’ll put Coda2Go in the keep an eye on category but I’m sticking with Xero for now.
A comment on an earlier post seemed worthy of it’s own discussion. Relating to some earlier posting about Telecom’s plans re SMEs and SaaS, I’m stoked to see that Victoria Crone from Telecom has both read the original post, and fronted up and replied.
In my opinion it shows a willingness on Telecom’s part to move away from its closed non-communicative ways of old, and to enter into dialogue, be it positive or critical.
Victoria’s post is copied here for those interested in where these projects are at;
Disclosure - Diversity Limited is a consultant to Telecom New Zealand and its subsidiaries.
Announced today that Google docs now supports customisation of style sheets. This change opens up the templating and styling options that have always been available in word, but does so obviously in an easy to collaborate, available anywhere, in the clouds way.
See some examples over here. I have to say that the differences between the traditional office productivity offerings, and the on-demand ones, are narrowing rapidly (especially in the case of text editing). For all but the highest level users, the on-demand solutions should now fulfil all their requirements.
Freeagentcentral is a nice little accounting application out of the UK. It’s a similar offering to Xero but as Xero themselves would be quick to point out, doesn’t offer the automated bank feeds (at this time) that Xero does.
As an aside it will be very interesting to see Xero and FAC go head to head in the UK market.
Anyway, interesting to see that FAC have taken a leaf out of Xero’s book and have begun signing up accountancy firms as partners. You’ll recall that at IPO, Xero strongly pushed it’s strategy of partnering with accountants, seeing them as teh gatekeepers to SME uptake. Xero no doubt also realised just how sticky the incumbent solutions where, and needed to be able to have a neutral voice showing the value to be gained from changing platforms.
FAC have signed up five accountants thus far and in a really interesting case of Quid Pro Quo, has offered a 10% discount off the cost of FAC when businesses change to one of the partnered accounting firms. The mutual benefit of this is huge;
- The accountants get new customers and a point of differentiation from their competitors
- FAC gets more subscribers, a group of well respected evangelists and, to a certain extent, someone else to cover service and support issues
- Customers get a point to point service and a professional who understands the system they use and can add value beyond basic form-filling
Back in July, when Google acquired Postini, I posted saying that the acquisition would give Google the level of archive, security and compliance that enterprise requires.
Great to read then this morning that Google has begun offering enterprise web security. It’s an automatic system that forces corporate computer users to go via the filters, and does not require a VPN for mobile customers.
Salient features are;
Complete web virus and spyware protection
- Proactive blocking of web malware before it reaches your network
- Protection from zero-hour threats
- Eliminate spyware back-channel communications
- Reduce patching and updates
- Complete web filtering and content control
Protects your network and your staff from undesirable web content, file types and MIME types
- Quota support by surfing time, bytes transferred and number of connections
- Optimizes network resources by reducing bandwidth congestion
- Monitors online activity with comprehensive reporting
Protection for roaming and remote users
- Extends to all roaming employees wherever they are working – at home, in a hotel room, café, client premises, or Wi-Fi spot
- Applies acceptable use policies to all roaming employees
- Enhances privacy by automatically encrypting all web traffic when the user connects to a public network
- Eliminates the need to backhaul traffic over the corporate VPN
- Simplifies management with no endpoint client and updating
All this points to Google becoming more and more serious about offering an enterprise grade solution. Postini on its own won’t break the Microsoft hegemony bt it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
![[Ask]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/ask.png)
![[Bloglines]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[BlogMarks]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/blogmarks.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Faves]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/faves.png)
![[Google]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[PlugIM]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/plugim.png)
![[Slashdot]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/slashdot.png)
![[Sphere]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/sphere.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Email]](http://diversity.net.nz/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Victoria here from Telecom. Thanks for the comments here everyone, it’s great to see the level of interest in what we’re trying to achieve. Here’s an update on where we’re at.
The new Telecom Business site has gone live, with information on all our services in a much easier to use format and can be found here http://www.telecombusinesshub.co.nz. We’ve had good feedback on this and are always keen for more. This is just the start. We’re in testing now for the next update which includes the domain and web services mentioned above and that will go live soon (sorry, can’t give exact dates and as you’ll know not everything goes smoothly in large scale technology projects!!) We have a lot more planned for this site. Concerns have been raised about our ability to understand and be relevant to business. We’ve been working with many smaller sized businesses over the past year, and have just confirmed 100 or so across the country that we’re working with directly on developing our services. So I guess what I’m saying is we want your feedback and if you’re interested in working more directly with us we’re keen as mustard.
It’s clear that bloggers are critical and sceptical of our ability to deliver this and we’re held to a high standard. So we’re working very hard to make sure what is put out is robust and won’t disappoint therefore we’ve been testing, trialling and in beta for a whole lot of stuff. A couple of examples, not enough space to go through them all (!) - we’ve trialed a new approach to the broadband help desk for business customers and we’re hearing it’s way better so we’re working through moving it from trial to launch - we’ve also been in trials for Managed Desktop services and are learning heaps about how we bring this service to the NZ businesses.
Re: SaaS, I’ve had a number of SaaS companies in NZ and internationally approach me based on March announcements. Personally, I’m conscious that this market has been tried before so taking learnings from the past, spending time internationally to see what’s driving success and working out how we support and make this market successful in NZ is critical. I continue to be blown away by the talent and entrepreneurship in this space.
On a closing note, as they say proof of the pudding is in the eating and hopefully the fact that we’re watching and taking part in the conversation in the blogososphere space indicates our openess.