Software as a service

SAP slow to adopt SaaS?

August 4, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

I’ve been noodling over some statistics that came from a survey of 100 UK and Ireland SAP User Group people. It covers attitudes towards SaaS. Given this is the week when SAP put Business ByDesign into general release, it is appropriate to think through some of the survey’s implications. The stats have been out for [...]

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Projecting Xero's annual report

July 26, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Once again AccMan sponsor Xero put in a solid performance for 2009-2010, closing out the year with revenue of NZ$3.4 million from a final customer count of 17,000. That was up from NZ$1.1 on 6,000 customers in 2009. This was achieved for a final headcount of 90 compared with 56 the previous year. Xero states [...]

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Change the world or go home

July 24, 2010 Innovation

Mark Lee recently launched a scathing attack on generic emails sent out by professionals. Why am I not surprised? I’ve been saying much the same about template driven websites. Firms feel they must have something but rarely go to the trouble of making their efforts unique or interesting. Here’s one crappy example. Here’s one that’s [...]

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If you do nothing else, watch Simon Wardley

July 24, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

There are presenters and there are presenters. Simon Wardley, part academic, part strategic thinker, part open source champion delivers a brilliant talk that encapsulates in 30 minutes much of which it’s taken me more than 3,000 blog posts to express. Anyone who knows me will also know I don’t use superlatives without good reason. As [...]

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And so it came to pass…

July 23, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

According to AccountingWeb referring to the Software Satisfaction Awards for 2010 says: The awards have also done away with the distinction between on-premise and web-based “Cloud” applications. As with last year, the SME Accounting category has become a fight between the leading lights of the accounting software as a service industry – FreeAgent Central, KashFlow [...]

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Sage's new Le Boss: a safe pair of hands or shades of SAP past?

July 23, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Apologies for being so late on the news. I took a wee vacation and switched (just about) anything to do with the Internet off. So – the rumours turned out to be true. Guy Berruyer, a 59 year old in-house exec takes over from Paul Walker on 1st September. As I read through the FT [...]

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So you want to be a saas consultant?

July 12, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Read on… This is really a follow up post to the one I did last week re: NetSuite and upon which Wayne Schultz commented: Where do typical consulting firms make money consulting on Netsuite or any SaaS. The main answer that I seem to hear from the early firms that are in this space providing [...]

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A KashFlow update

July 5, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Last Monday I visited KashFlow‘s offices in central London to film an interview with CEO Duane Jasckson. Duane was both generous with his time and prepared to be frank about what the company is doing, where it is heading and the kinds of thing it has in store. Off camera, he showed me the practitioners’ [...]

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A chance meeting with Ed Molyneux, CEO FreeAgent

July 2, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

While I was attending the Cloud Computing World Forum I unexpectedly bumped into Ed Molyneux, CEO of FreeAgent. I can’t remember the last time we met so it was a pleasant and welcome surprise. As has become usual when I meet CEO’s of the new breed of SaaS accounting solution vendors, we swap notes, exchange [...]

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SaaS solutions need to mature. Rapidly

June 25, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

A coincidence arose today that got me thinking about the relative maturity of the various SaaS players. A couple of weeks back I wrote that in one selection case, the professional preferred Twinfield over one of the newer players even though the person acknowledged the Twinfield UI could be better. Function needs to lead form. [...]

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