Cloud Computing/SaaS

Xero operating update: massive progress

April 1, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Xero has issued an operating update as at 31st March, 2010. (PDF) It looks pretty good. The highlights: Xero will report operating revenues in excess of $3m for the 2010 financial year – a tripling of revenues earned for the 2009 financial year. Paying customers exceeded 17,000 in more than 50 countries compared to 6,000 in [...]

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How SaaS makes free a good option

March 17, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

The notion of free doesn’t always sit well with many colleagues. If there is no monetary sale price then the theory runs that there is less value to be had than from levying a monetary charge. But is that true? One argument in favour of SaaS is that the buyer doesn’t have it make an [...]

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RightNow's CSA – a game changer?

March 9, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

RightNow’s CSA announcement from last week could be a game changer for SaaS and on-premise providers alike. The above video sets out my thinking behind last week’s Customer Service Agreement (CSA) announcement by the company. At the time, I wrote a short analysis over at ZDNet. The above video is a presentation put into the [...]

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Struggling with understanding the cloud?

March 9, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Do you struggle to understand cloud computing? You’re not alone. So much has been written about what The Cloud is…or is not, that discussing the topic seems like picking at a festering wound. Occasionally something comes along that does a terrific job at puncturing the vendors’ earnest desire to score definitional points. This post from [...]

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Who's winning in the SaaS accounting stakes?

March 1, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Can we discern winners in the SaaS accounting stakes or is it too early? Unpacking web analytics data can help. Taking a leaf out of CloudAve’s book, but perhaps not being as artistic, I ran a DoubleClick AdPlanner analysis for some of the better known names in the SaaS accounting market and threw in a [...]

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Avoiding the creeping commodification trap

March 1, 2010 Marketing

Keen eyed professionals have asked whether it is possible to avoid the creeping commodification that is impacting their business. Keener eyed professionals already understand the risk of letting commodification squish what was once proprietary knowledge. SaaS accounting is proving to be the biggie here. With more providers realizing that the provision of advice that’s service [...]

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Single ledger erosion of professional accounting software

February 23, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Adrian Pearson, senior partner at a Xero based practice has recently been schmoozed by Hamish Edwards, one of Xero’s co-founders and himself a practitioner. Adrian writes: Most of the talk was about how Xero could help us with the process of converting clients from other systems, such as Sage and QuickBooks but we also discussed [...]

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Getting the cloud message across

February 10, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

This from a panel assembled by AccountingWeb: Is “the Cloud” relevant to accountants and their clients? No. When we set out to find accountants to attend our accounting event at the Business Cloud Summit, nearly two-thirds of the accountants we approached said it wasn’t part of their thinking.  We got a similar reaction when we [...]

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Following the implementation: Nimbus and FinancialForce.com

January 25, 2010 Asides

There are so many myths and legends around SaaS and cloud computing it is refreshing to see one company prepared to publicly document its implementation. Nimbus is doing that, talking to the issues that matter to them. Right now, they’re concentrating on using their FinancialForce.com implementation as a way of re-visiting business processes to see [...]

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Multi-currency war report

January 22, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Re-purposing Kilgore’s famous soliloquy to Willard from Apocolypse Now, I love the smell of a vendor slugfest on an otherwise quiet Friday afternoon. And so it is. Earlier in the week on FinancialForce.com, Dave Turner seems to have set off a veritable firestorm from some of the SaaS players. Knowing Dave as well as I [...]

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