On Friday before Silicon Beach drinks I had a catchup with the other Webciety companies that will be at CeBIT Sydney over the next 3 days along with Saasu.
The Webciety pavilion focuses on web-based society. It features SaaS web applications like Saasu, mobile web, wikis, web communities, blogs, microblogs and other interactive Internet services which are making our lives increasingly digital and ever easier.
Webciety is a major success born out of CeBIT in Germany. All the Webciety participants are speaking at some point over the 3 days at the Webciety Pavilion. See the webciety speaking program for details. I’m speaking at 11:00am on Thursday the 14th on the topic of:
What will Web3.0 look like?
Web3.0 is in early stages, but the picture isn’t clear. Web3.0 is bigger than the sum of it’s parts and accordingly we have trouble seeing what it is.
I attended a fantastic EOTW conference in Perth, Australia last week (Twitter hash tag #EOTW08). I met some inspiring people like Derek Featherstone the FurtherAhead.com accessibility Gu (A leading Guru) who is also a keen triathlete. I also did a workshop with Google JS/jQuery Gu Cameron Adams (aka The Man in Blue). It was also great to meet Matt Patterson from Freshview (Saasu’s email marketing system). Thanks Matt for the T-shirt!
Many thanks to AWIA for a great event and inviting me over to speak and attend. My talk was about ecosystems, and if there is one ecosystem you must join if you use technology in your business then it’s AWIA.
Here’s my preso I did at the conference which I have posted on slideshare.NET
If you’re a business owner I recommend attending conferences. The trick is to pick the eyes out of them. I only go to about three a year as either a speaker or a sponsor. So ruthless choices are required. My picks are Barcamp, Edge of the Web and CeBIT.
Edge of the Web is coming up in November (Perth, Australia), brought to you by the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA). It is designed for business stakeholders trying to create next generation business practices that utilise the web. The people behind Edge of the Web recognise that technology and the web are an integral part of the business model. So often I see business people who think their business is “what” they do rather than “how” they do it.
Nearly all businesses are hybrid technology businesses these days,
they are part technology company and part product or services. The “how” is all about technology.
I’ll be at the conference talking on SaaS (Software as a Service) as an Ecosystem for businesses to operate in. Having your business in the cloud is becoming an integral part of an effective “how” component in your business. Some smart cookies (and coincidently good friends and customers of Saasu) will be there also such as the Madpilot, Myles Eftos and Millstreams, Adrian and Rosemary Lynch. I also hear that Jordan Brock and his 5 Senses Coffee with be there. 5 Senses was at a recent Barcamp, and the coffee experience just made it ultra-pleasant between sessions.
If you are not sure if this applies to you then consider a sole trader services business as an example who has a large portion of what they do dependent on technology. Getting the books done, preparing marketing material, email, franchising, scheduling, managing inventory, procurement, network marketing etc. It’s all about technology.
If you want to get to Perth then Saasu wants to pitch in and help by subsidising the trip a little through a cheaper Saasu subscription. Just use voucher code AWIA-EDGE when you renew or signup to Saasu NetAccounts. We will add 3 months to your business file renewal date once we confirm you have registered for the conference*.
Edge of the Web is on 6th and 7th of November, Perth WA. AWIA members $395, non-members $450.
ASIDE: If you aren’t already an AWIA member then get on board. Saasu did and never looked back. We are now on their committee and can honestly say it has been a great expereience dealing with some amazing web savvy members and receiving so much businesses through our membership.
If you have multiple business files in your subscription it will be pro-rata calculated. Offer ends 6th November 2008. One voucher at a time sorry. This offer can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer.
Internet failures (also known as digital brown out) can happen anywhere. The recent and very topical Bankstown cable break incident is a good reminder to keep your Business Continuity Plan (BCP) up to date. This was a Sydney event affecting 5,000 people ore more but obviously can happen anywhere.
One of our much admired customers, Working Solo’s Leah Maclean* posted on the event and made some good points so we thought it was time we let you know our thoughts on the topic.
What can you do when the Net goes down?
There are a surprisingly large number of ways to deal with the Net being down. It’s interesting how humans quickly find efficient solutions to problems that face them in business. Being a SaaS company, web connectivity is very important. If the net does go down it isn’t totally crippling, it’s just inconvenient because there are lots of options to deal with it these days.
If local wired internet access fails in your business try these steps -
- Go wireless, most businesses have a USB wireless internet dongle or a WiFi internet account for sales purposes anyway
- Go to the cafe, most businesses have a cafe nearby that offers their own (or sponsored) WiFi access or an internet cafe as per those used by the backpacker community
- Go home, most people have cable internet at home now or if not at home then a close family member
- Go to a partner, most businesses have close trading counter-parties that they deal with who wouldn’t mind you using a desk for a day
- Go to a serviced office, spend a few dollars and get access at a bureau or a few weeks at a serviced office, they are surprising inexpensive
- Go to your IT provider and ask them to lend you a desk and a net connection or recommend somewhere
Your fault or theirs? Thank goodness for SaaS
The above list translates to many alternatives as a result of having your data with a high quality SaaS provider because it is usually the subscriber (i.e. you) that has the problem. Sometimes, very rarely it is on the SaaS provider’s end because one of the connections to the NOC (network operations centre/center) fails. This is usually not an issue though because most of the tier one NOC’s have redundant links into them from different directions by different carriers in hardened cable carriers to different Telco’s and then once it gets to the Telco each of them has multi routes to their peer Telco’s too.
A good SaaS provider has meshing resilience. This meshing prevents any single (or multiple even) breaks impacting the total service. We wrote about our amazing strengths in this area recently.
As Transaction Cross Docking (TCD) becomes more common place (because it makes so much sense) this stuff is crucial because it will be global distributed connected communities of millions not just thousands that are impacted.
All this compares well to the old world where you had stuff on your local server and a power or Telco outage to your premises meant no business no email and moving your server the old way - with a forklift!
* Working Solo’s Leah Maclean works with small business to grow their confidence and their success. Leah is a design and technology advisor to clever business women who want to do more and know more in the online world.
Saasu is connecting to Professional and Social Networks (PSN) including; LinkedIn, Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and Orkut. The beauty of SaaS is it enables these types of advantages.
In the contact screen you will see new icons you can click to check out your contact in various social networks covering over 200 million people already.
I’ll concentrate on LinkedIn today since it is the most professional centric network. Professional and Social Networking really is a far too simplistic simplistic way of describing LinkedIn.
Here are some observations we’ve made in recent times. We would love comment on these points as we believe this has ramifications for product development in Saasu applications. A lot of them relate to the fact your research can be anonymous but connections are permissioned.
If you need to know more about permission, start with Seth Godin because he wrote about it early and well. Permission marketing is changing the world.
Keep track of people you know and like
The simple and best reason to use LinkedIn. You know where people are as they move from one job or city to another. It can be everything from an online business intelligence assistant to an international (or local) research tool to an online CV/resume or yet another contact database. Best of all is it doesn’t stop there, you see who knows who.
LinkedIn closes the knowledge gap you have about candidates, employees, prospects, partners, suppliers and customers. This enhances the legitimacy of the contact. It accelerates you along the getting to know you curve. It can help move you a bit further ahead at your first face to face meeting because you already know more things you have in common, locations, employers, clubs, education, sport and more.
For a long time companies have not wanted to share ownership of customer and prospect relationships with their employees. These relationships have been owned by the company. LinkedIn allows employees (especially professionals with an eye to having their own business eventually) to de-institutionalise their contacts, taking back some of the dollar value from their employees balance sheet back to their own. A two edged sword of course. Transparency is the biggest winner.
Keeping loose contact fresh is quite difficult. When systematised in a social network the expectation of freshness of permission is enhanced. When you hear from someone through LinkedIn your little shoulder devil says “this person is ok, because you permissioned them”. That same communication via phone would sometimes have the shoulder devil saying “Who is this person? How did they get my number?”. Permissioning extends credibility of contact.
Degree’s of separation permissioning
Linked in creates a new type of commercial relationship legitimacy. Invited recipients will tend to accept being network beneficiaries themselves. The established connection has value, an unrealised dollar value. It costs us anywhere from $0.10 to $100 to get a permissioned contact in most businesses so connections in social tools are real permissioned assets. Let’s be honest about this, it’s just good business. Participants in the LinkedIn community can monetise their connections via sales and marketing activities. This is the conversion of unrealised value into realised value because a certain percentage of those interactions result in sale and thus revenue. You are converting your virtual inventory of permissioned contacts into your revenue line. The beauty being that virtual inventory can be resold to, it doesn’t require a cost of goods sold entry to re-acquire another permissioned contact. Don’t think of it just as product sales. It could be a better career, some venture capital, a new partner, and of course selling your product.
Channel Degradation - BACN
If you plan to use LinkedIn for sales bear in mind that there is a direct relationship between frequency and value of the permissioned contact set you have. Your behaviour could become known as a commercial version of spam called BACN. Equally, as more participants use the medium for sales and marketing activities the value of the connections will diminish. You only have to look at the C2C social networks to see how this can happen. Permissioned spammers (BACN) looking for love from your wallet wears thin real quick.
Check out the company profile pages on any major company on LinkedIn. You can see who is who and any changes. Recently LinkedIn moved to formalise companies and organisations in their network for the benefit of data rigour, their members and themselves. It was a good move, it cleans up the problem where many users add they workplace to their profile resulting in 100’s of version of that work place where picking it from a list would be better. In short companies and organisations are now centrally managed. A great benefit of this is that the tracking of organisations over their lifecycle will be very accurate versus some of the rubbish you get from old style directory providers Yellowpages and Whitepages.
Gartner, arguably one of the most respected research firms globally has given the iPhone the big OK for use by big companies for their applications.
The link above is kindly provided by Cebit, we are presenting soon at Cebit 2008 and we won the coveted platinum excellence in innovation award there last year.
We commented recently and accurately in this blog on the earth shattering impact of the iPhone web access demonstrated with hard numbers, so this endorsement by Gartner is no surprise to the team here at saasu but it is a huge green light for businesses all around the world, not just the big end of town.
This is another reason saasu made the right decision getting the current release of saasu working on the apple itouch (ipod that looks like iphone but without the phone). See the saasu netaccounts on iphone demo video a happy saasu customer made even before we announced it.
It is also why the new release of saasu includes integration with google maps and hundreds of millions of people’s profiles on the big Professional and Social Networking (PSN) sites. More on that tomorrow.
The whole world is getting more saas-y, not just the big end of town. Now you can run your multi country business on your iphone with the SaaS Ecosystem including Saasu.
For an industry segment that used to be geek central, most of our new sales are now from non-tech firms and non-tech people in those firms.
On a lighter note we now also have a potential theme movie for the Saas industry - Saas Girl or similar in name at least - is about to be released, watch the saasy girl trailer.
We are also working on a marketing idea for saas girl and saas guy but more on that later, anticipation is half the fun.
Clone, Connect, Automate - saving time and reducing errors is just the beginning.
One the of great things about SaaS is the ability to opt-in permanently (or on a transaction by transaction) basis to information from a counter-party such as supplier, customer, employee or other legal entity you ‘trade’ with in a broader sense.
We call this automated exchange of information ‘Transaction Cross-Docking’ or TCD, just like the traditional cross-docking of pallets of physical materials in warehouses (more…)
If you have not seen Marc’s excellent recent post on Sustainable Business you should read it.
Today we will build on that article and take a slight tangent to focus on the specific use of SaaS (software-as-a-service) to improve your business and improve (not just simplify) your life with SaaS in three areas. (more…)
Another new Software as a Service (SaaS) idea that might work for some of our business customers is Avatars.
Avatars are a digital representation of people. You find them all over the internet these days, in virtual worlds and increasingly in commercial use for customer support.
A more recent innovation however is the use of these Avatars to sell your products. In pre-sales not post-sales, as it is a very different area because people are less tolerant of poor quality voice or images.
We set one up recently to welcome new visitors to saasu. If you have any feedback let us know. It’s easy to get one for your own site.
The downside of course is (more…)
We reviewed our hosting provider again recently as part of a major upgrade in capacity to handle our growth.
Saasu client data (and our own) sits inside some pretty cool technology infrastructure in an extremely high grade location with world class qualifications including some from financial institutions and government security organisations.
Just some of our technology infrastructure features -
- Guards on the front door
- Hundreds of cameras
- Concrete all round - including the roof
- Biometric security
- Multiple levels of steel access doors and cages
- Multiple levels of redundant power, telecommunications and air conditioning
- Laser smoke particle detection; not to mention
- 24×7 monitoring plus
- Heavy duty protection from ram raids and even plane crashes
That helps us well sleep at night and we think it helps thousands of our users to sleep well at night too.
We also had yet another client with laptop problems recently. This follows a long line of similar client problems with their equipment being lost or stolen from client offices and cars not to mention dropped or broken laptops. All these events mean their business is impacted negatively because of lost data because many people still use software with local data copies on their PC/Mac.
But not if they use SaaS. In every case the saasu.com clients get up and running in minutes with much relief.
No loss of -
- Data (nor any data disclosure risk) - just find another computer with Internet access
- Time just when you need that time the most
- Revenue
- Client Satisfaction
It is unlikely any laptop with a local copy of your financial records will ever offer the same security and peace of mind as SaaS ‘big iron’ technology infrastructure.
Yet another reason why SaaS (Software as a Service) will prevail over Software for most businesses in the long run and why more and more are realising this benefit every single day.
There is a great article on this topic that deserves some profile as it neatly sums up the debate around where giants like Google go next.
I like to think of it as -
- be unique OR
- be integrated OR
- be in another market
To give a simplistic analogy, if your proposition is not truly unique in the world (like iPhone) then get integrated (like say SMS) so the convenience or the network effect makes you the winner.
Google has some unique offerings but their level of uniqueness will be challenged over time so spreading a wider net and ensuring a larger integrated offering is key to retention and growth. More specifically in SaaS finance we think it is inevitable that competition hots up in our space but we know (from experience) like a lot of seemingly straightforward activities, there is more to online accounting and SaaS finance than meets the eye and that just like Facebook vs LinkedIn or Plaxo or the free email wars, there is room for a bunch of different philosophies that service different market segments.
In Small business there are numerous levels already from jurisdiction neutral invoicing to country specific micro business solutions all the way through to super expensive multi-country corporate versions.
We are very much of the view that while people might want to start with just billing, it is not enough to deliver real business benefits and runs the risk of becoming yet another island of information if you are not very careful. Further, you need to differentiate or integrate to deliver real value - either do it uniquely well or link to someone that does. That is why we link with Salesforce.com instantly out of the box with no extra work and we and our partners are building more all the time.
Could we here at Saasu.com | the web finance engine be purchased by Google or Microsoft or Amazon or eBay to get into the web finance space in a quick merger/acquisition? Of course, while we are a decent size we are tiny by comparison on the global stage. Would it be good for our clients/partners? Probably very much so because of the integration with other services like mail, chat, analytics, e-commerce and the network effect of their client bases. Would there be some risks? Sure but they are little more than steps to follow and formula mitigation given the amount of resources that come into play in the M&A world.
You might find my comments on the above article of interest too, Marc Lehmann also has some interesting views.
A major hardware and software vendor is warning of a data centre power disaster sometime in the future. I feel that there is an ulterior motive.
This vendor loses a lot of revenue when SaaS Utilities are created allowing 1000’s of businesses to share infrastructure.
Data centres do go down every now and then, but it is very rare. Usually they are back up quick smart, so this is not a big prediction in my view, just scaremongering.
(more…)
Industry terminology is like a verbal business card for all the players in the industry. Terms define who we are and how clients and prospects recognise us collectively. They are important because they are a key marketing channel.
For example - Do you recognise these terms and know what they mean?
- SaaS
- On-Demand
- CaaS
- S+S
- SasS
- Live
- PaaS
- UIaaS
Here at Saasu.com we are amazed at the word games other players in our industry are using to try and confuse the market.
SaaS means Software-as-a-Service. It is our preferred term and the one the industry uses mainly. Lets stick to it!
Particularly at a time when SaaS is still growing so we have a collective responsibility and need as providers to you our clients and prospects to educate you and (at least we believe) to not confuse the issues.
At Saasu.com want to make things clear not complicated. (more…)
Two major global developments in the SaaS (Software as a Service) world show the blue sky is really here today. (more…)
I spoke at the NSW.net ICT cluster last week to a bunch of potential and current Microsoft Partners (we work on all operating systems for your information). I gave our 5 minute pitch and as usual during Q&A there were lots of questions (SaaS is a hot topic at the moment). We always get a security question and my answer is always the same, it’s a bunch of questions that effectively return the challenge. I only asked a couple of these but I’ve listed some others I often ask as well. (more…)
Everyone has heard of speed dating - but the new new thing is using it for business. I experienced it in Sydney but it seems to be a global phenomenon…. and a great idea.
Last week was a good example - a crowd of SaaS trendies gathered to hear about a bunch of business solutions at the upmarket Establishment Hotel chaired by our good friends and premier partner - sqwarepeg and was billed as ‘like speed dating for business solutions’.
So how does it work? The format is simple.
Prospective clients register online and get to spend a few minutes with each vendor. Just like real speed dating the convener rings a bell at the end of the allotted time (3 minutes for singles meeting at traditional speed dating or in this case 10 minutes for prospects meeting vendors) and everyone moves on to the next ‘date’. In this case the date was held at a ‘pod’ complete with plasma and internet connectivity with demo SaaS application up and running.
If you are interested in continuing the ‘relationship’ you exchange cards or in true speed dating style write your details on the sheets provided.
Now repeat for each vendor until every prospect has seen every product once.
The great thing about this format is for clients they see a broad section of offerings quickly without risking getting stuck with a boring geek (just like speed dating). For vendors they get to meet a variety of clients and tailor the pitch just a little to stress the client specific needs just enough to follow up later.
Vendors showing at this session were Saasu.com showing our web finance engine (of course), Google showed Adwords, Omniture.com showed their rather cool web analytics (for higher end clients who outgrown Google Analytics), Eloqua, salesforce.com and Sqwarepeg also showed their own products.
The amount of cross-over between vendors was interesting, a good number were using each other’s products.
This event was called the ‘On Demand Circuit’ which is a face to face version of our own nascent online SaaSbay.com - both of which are trying to build the local SaaS ecosystem.
Next time we aim to show the applications interacting and really demonstrate the power of the SaaS ecosystem in action. This will be great e.g. Saasu already talks to salesforce.com and so do other products.
It has been an interesting couple of months with recent research released by leading analysts - all putting their stakes in the ground for current and future growth in the software as a service segment globally.
Saasu received a kind mention in the latest Springboard Research press release.
It must be interesting because it was also picked up by a bunch of other media channels including -
The research claims 92.5% growth was experienced in 2006 to reach a market size of US$154 million and forecasts 83% growth in 2008 and growing to US$1.16 Billion in 2010 just for Asia.
Probably more interesting is the increase in awareness and adoption. These were up from 41% in 2006 to 75% in 2007 for awareness and actual adoption of some kind of SaaS service now use at 46% for the nearly four hundred firms surveyed.
This compares to IDC’s view of the on-demand world market (courtesy of NZTE) with 29.5% pa average growth 2007-20011 with estimated market size of US$3.95 Billion in 2006 (up 54% on 2005) and hitting US$14.5 Billion in 2011.
I have watched Springboard for some years and consider them to be one of the better experts in the area but who knows. One thing is certain - the future looks bright for SaaS and Saasu.com in particular.
Overall growth stats I hear bounced around in the industry are typically a minimum of 25%pa for the foreseeable future and 20-30% of the enterprise software market being addressable by SaaS. Personally I think both of these are on the low side.
I don’t envy the research people from IDC and Springboard who have to work this out.
One thing the industry and observers do tend to agree on is the reasons why people use SaaS - ease of use, ease of implementation and cost savings.
Personally I think these are ‘early stage’ responses and once people start really using the products they will add two more reasons - a) additional internet enabled features (e.g. simple emailing of things automatically like payslips, business intelligence and more) and b) richer other features that they actually use (as opposed to bloatware that has loads of un-used features - good SaaS vendors will watch their clients and learn - that is the key differentiator that will decide the eventual winners).
When you lose your operating system (OS) or it has a bit of a fit during upgrade you will instantly see the joy and power of SaaS (Software-as-a-service).
To recover your computer after a crash, virus, failed upgrade or other reason you should only need to perform very basic tasks. However, this is only the case when you are under the care of SaaS (online applications). The primary tasks are to re-install your browser and Adobe reader.
Meanwhile software users will need to be reinstall programs one CD at a time (if you can find the CD’s). You may need to find your out of date backups to recover lost data files (if you remembered to do your backups). You may need to re-engineer information (reinvent what your desktop and document files used to look like). You’ll almost definitely need to have a quiet little cry into your hands (or smash the screen). Worst of all face your fellow staff if you were slack and didn’t do the backups like everyone told you to.
It hurts but fear not as SaaS is here to help. She’ll care for you like no OS ever did. She wont bug you for upgrades, setup, disk required notifications or Product Keys. She’s a kind understanding mother who’s job is to nurture you and give you time to grow and play like a young child. She does all the nasty stuff behind the scenes for you like backing up, upgrading, installing and making sure you’re wearing the right colours (operating system and browser neutral).
I know the cost of losing the OS only too well. I lost my laptop operating system last year but I was lucky because I’m already under the care of mother SaaS. I had already moved all my photo’s to Flickr.com an online photo warehouse. Other SaaS products I use are Google Apps, Gmail and obviously Saasu. The impact was limited, I was back up and running in hours not days. Had I not been nurtured by my SaaS mother I would have lost a couple of months worth of photos which I probably wouldn’t have backed up at that time (i.e. My wife would hate me!).
Brad Howarth writes a great piece about this topic in his blog.
In a similar vein, Apple 3rd party developers are hitting frustrations dealing with the iPhone OS but SaaS developers building online applications for the iPhone have no such problem. The OS becomes virtually irrelevant in the world of SaaS. Web browser based it’s clearly less restrictive.
If SaaS is like a mum then the browser is your best mate, he’s light and nimble, he’s winning the battle over software, costs nothing and gives you access to all your stuff wherever you are. Feed him with lots of web applications and your best mate will watch your back by saving you time.
We don’t think of ourselves as a Web 2.0 company but somehow we keep getting tagged as one and I suppose a lot of our thinking tries to be contemporary so we consider it a compliment to be named on a ‘Leading Web 2.0 Companies List‘ issued recently on Read/Write Web by Ross Dawson and Richard McManus along with some other fairly cool companies. It might not be as global as the Platinum Excellence in Innovation Award we also won recently but it makes us just as proud! We would have liked to see a bunch of others on the list too (like Campaign Monitor for example which we use here at Saasu). The comments on that list are closed for now so feel free to make some comments on the other links above or comment here and we will pass them on. Cheers, Peter.
I’ve been a big fan of the Campaign Monitor email list management tool for some time. I can thoroughly recommend it - it’s a great product and the service from the guys at Freshview is fantastic.
So far I’m yet to find another service that is comparable on a price/features basis. Well worth checking out…
A new contender popped up on my radar the other day: Emma [via Seth Godin].
It looks interesting - but I haven’t had a chance to check it out in detail yet. Has anyone out there given it a go yet? If you have, drop us a comment and let us know what you think…
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