I was a little surprised when I saw this post by Rodrigo over on the Zoho blog. The title struck me as a little strange coming from someone who works for a business that is pushing the SaaS boundaries - what was he up to saying that Software + Services has beaten SaaS?
Of course reading further, I found that Rodrigo was referring to the operating system and browser as being the only two pieces of software needing to be installed. But the sentence that resonated with me was this one;
As for me, I use Windows Vista. Certainly not because I wanted to, but because Microsoft forced me to get Vista on my new Dell machine. So I’m stuck with it. I was apprehensive about using Vista … but after a few days I got used to it. Wanna know why? No, it’s not because Vista is good - it’s because it doesn’t matter. The underlying operating system you use is irrelevant. 99% of the time I’m at a computer
Of course it’s a theme I’ve talked about often in the past - the fact that most of us spend most of our time within a browser, rendering the operating system pretty much irrelevant.
After spending time at the Office 2.0 conference, and exploring the multitude of offerings available out their on-demand for businesses, it makes me excited for the future of business and the future of the web. I’m looking forward to exploring current and future offerings, and studiously ignoring the fact that I even have an operating system!
It’s a little bit later than expected but at last I’m happy to announce the creation of CloudAve. Along with a great team of writers and researchers, Zoli Erdos as editor in chief and myself as editor will be creating what we hope will become the pre-eminent location for cloud computing and SaaS analysis and commentary. We will be specifically focusing on SaaS tools for business.
Originally slated to launch during the recent Office 2.0 conference, lots of busy-ness, a few technical issues and a general high degree of chatter at that time made us decide to delay until next Monday. We’re posting about it now to allow people to subscribe to our feed, all ready for our content to come floating over the pipes.
Our vision with CloudAve (in fact it’s part of our manifesto) is that it should start and remain ad free - in order to pay its way then Zoho has come on board and is sponsoring the site. Have no fear though - their sponsorship is completely hands-off when it comes to editorial independence - we’ll tell it like we see it - no matter who we catch in the crossfire!
So where to for Diversity? I’ll be posting a little less often here, and my posts will probably be more around the themes of New Zealand business, economic development, manufacturing, broadband issues and the like (in fact similar themes to where my blogging started) - my co-contributors to Diversity will continue to post here as and when they see fit.
I’ve also got a few interesting projects coming up in the next few months around the New Zealand telecommunications industry, small business development in New Zealand and the like. So stay tuned - there’ll still be stuff of interest.
But also head over to CloudAve, with the talent we have on board we’ll begin to amass a pretty compelling resource.
Sitting in the last session of the conference - Ismael is going over the tools used to run the entire operation - 500 physical attendees and a couple of thousand virtual ones. All planned and arranged in a couple of months - it’s been a whirlwind.
Overall it’s been great to be around a bunch of people who "get it" - understand the cloud and what it can bring to business going forwards.
If I had any criticism it would be that a lot of time was spent talking about where we are at - not so much time spent visioning the future. Obviously with a number of vendors present this isn’t a surprising fact - but nonetheless it would have been great to have some visioning sessions that were vendor agnostic.
Anyway… thanks to all the attendees, thanks a bunch to Ismael and his team and I look forward to seeing you all again next year.
I’ve just been told that joining the other panelists will be Justin Kitch, the head of SMB SaaS for Intuit. Kitch is formerly CEO of Homestead which was recently acquired by Intuit.
I’m more than keen to take questions from the "floor". Leave any you have as a comment on this post and I’ll try to fit them in to the panel. The panel occurs on Thursday, September 4, 2008, 2:15PM to 3:00PM (San Francisco time), and you should be able to follow it from the Office 2.0 website
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It’s a little bit later than expected but at last I’m happy to announce the creation of