…when whatever you’re discussing the first thought that comes to your mind is “I’ve already blogged about this” and want to quote yourself – in an offline, verbal discussion.
Archives for April 2008
How to Make Outlook Cool. Actually, Kool.
Posted on April 20, 2008 ·
Outlook read backwards is Kooltuo. Wow, it would make a good startup name
. No, I did not go crazy, but TechCrunch reports that Microsoft just signed a letter of intent to acquire Xobni. And Xobni = Inbox, backwards.
Not that it’s a surprise: I wish I could predict everything with such certainty. This is what wrote in February, when Bill Gates presented Xobni for Outlook as “the next generation of social networking” at the Microsoft Office Developers Conference:
What does it mean when Bill Gates presents your product, a super-cool Outlook plugin to his crowd of developers?
- Gates’s message: now go back and copy this fast. That would be the classic Microsoft style, as many software startups can attest to. It would also put the market introduction to somewhere … around 2015? Unlikely.
- Microsoft will acquire Xobni in no time. Sweet and fast deal. Congratulations to the Xobni team and investors!
So, yes, congratulations to the Xobni team! On a personal note, I regret I can’t try Xobni, as I long ago ditched Outlook along with a lot of desktop bloatware, and am in happier land now, using Web-based applications. I’m perfectly happy ( and productive) with the combination of Gmail and the Zoho apps, and if I ever leave Gmail, it will be for another web-mail, not back to the desktop. The air is fresher in the Cloud.
San Francisco Olympic Torch Costs Hugely Underestimated
Posted on April 18, 2008 ·
The City of San Francisco hugely underestimates the total cost of the Olympic torch run (more a hide-and-seek) in San Francisco. Here’s the breakdown of costs by City agencies:
— Police Department: $504,896.75
— Municipal Transportation Agency: $149,516
— Department of Public Works: $55,995
— Fire Department: $12,000 (approximation)
— Recreation and Park Department: $4,000 (approximation)
— Total: $726,407.75
But that’s city agencies only, the true total cost is significantly larger.
What’s missing is the cost of lost productive time by the tens of thousands of people who lined the streets of San Francisco early morning in the hope of getting a glimpse of the torch. All in vain, as the torch took evasive action.
(photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)
Zoho CRM Enterprise Edition @ SMB Price
Posted on April 16, 2008 ·
This morning Zoho announced the Enterprise Edition of their CRM product. The key updates are:
- Profiles for managing CRM module-level permissions
- Roles for modeling organizational hierarchy and setting up data sharing rules
- Groups for sharing the data among various departments
- Field-level security for controlling the access rights (View or Edit) of fields in CRM modules
- Automatically update Stock information once the Purchase Order is approved
- Find and Merge the duplicate records in Vendors module
- Convert Quote to Sales Order or Invoice in a single click
- Convert Sales Order to Invoice in a single click
- Add account information automatically while creating quotes/orders/invoices from the potentials
The key in “going enterprise” is no doubt the new security/permissioning scheme. That said, Zoho CRM has already been functionally rich even before today’s upgrade. I’ve repeatedly stated that supporting business processes like Sales Order Management, Procurement, Inventory Management, Invoicing Zoho really has a mini-ERP system, under the disguise of the CRM label.. In fact let’s just stop here for a minute.
Today’s announcement aside, I still consider Zoho’s primary focus to be the small business (SMB) market. As for CRM, it really comes down to the classic breadth vs. depth of functionality question. Zoho CRM’s breadth, along with the other productivity applications allows many SMB’s to use it as their single, only business application. The market leader in SaaS CRM, Salesforce.com clearly supports fewer business processes, offering more depth in each – probably a better fit for larger enterprises which likely run several applications anyway. This matrix provides an overview of Zoho CRM vs. Salesforce CRM Group and Professional Editions. (click on pic for detail)
Having done a functional comparison, a quick look at pricing demonstrates why Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu called Salesforce.com still very expensive:
No wonder Larry Dignan at ZDNet declares “Zoho aims to poach Salesforce.com customers.” But Larry (and Marc), you ain’t seen nothing yet… just wait till Zoho comes out with a Salesforce.com importer 
.
Clearly, Salesforce.com does keep a close eye on Zoho, otherwise why would they spend money on the Google Adword “Zoho CRM“?
But again, reality check: Salesforce.com does own the Enterprise space. For now.
Finally, a word about integration. After all, Zoho is known for their almost endless range of products, they should work together… Currently Zoho Sheet, the spreadsheet application is fully integrated with CRM – most data can be edited either inside CRM or in the spreadsheet format that many business users are more familiar with.
Zoho plans to integrate Writer, their word processor, Mail (still in private beta) as well as some of the business applications, namely recently released Invoice and People. When all that’s done, Zoho will have a more complete offering than two industry giants, Salesforce.com and Google together. I can’t wait…
(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho. Take anything I say with a grain of salt. In fact with a pound of salt. Don’t believe a single word of mine about Zoho products: go ahead and check them out yourself).
Related posts: Zoho Blogs, CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, CNET News.com, Mashable!, Between the Lines, Web Worker Daily, Irregular Enterprise, InformationWeek,
Failed SP1 Update: Vista Still Sucks
Posted on April 15, 2008 ·
Pardon my French.. it’s not exactly my style, especially not in the title, but enough is enough. I’ve long given up detailing Vista’s countless failures, but somehow, unconsciously I still hoped things would get better after installing SP1.
Not that I could get it – I was one of the “few” who had an offending Intel graphics chip in my HP PC, so I could not get it for a while. Then today it showed up on Windows Update, so off I went to a spare laptop (XP) since I knew the update would take about an hour or so.
Checking it an hour later:
Service Pack did not install. Reverting Changes. Do not turn off your computer.
WTF? So now it’s gonna spend another hour, a total cost of two hours to get back to where I was in the first place? And they wonder (?) why everyone says Vista Sucks.
P.S. Windows 7, whenever it comes, should be released as “Vista Final”, free to all Vista victims along with Microsoft’s letter of apology.
How do you Twit that Twitter is Down?
Posted on April 14, 2008 ·
Update (4/20): parislemon: If Twitter Breaks in the Woods and No One Can Tweet About It, Is It Really Broken?
College Curriculum Includes Brothel Visit
Posted on April 12, 2008 ·
This gives “hands-on” education a new meaning…
Update: originally I posted this with a typo in the title – one that made the whole title dull and meaningless:
College Curriculum Includes Brother Visit.
Ouch.
3 Half-Truths about SaaS
Posted on April 11, 2008 ·
I am a big fan of Software as a Service, but it frustrates the hell out of me to see industry pundits over-hype it without really understanding it. Here are 3 killer (in the bad sense) half-truths about SaaS:
1 – SaaS is simpler, easier to implement than On-premise software (see update at the bottom)
2 – SaaS is for the SMB market
3 – SaaS is bought, not sold, it’s the end of Enterprise Sales
Let’s examine them in detail:
1 – SaaS is simpler, easier to implement than On-premise software.
The only part that’s absolutely true is the technical installation, which the customer no longer has to worry about with SaaS. But we all know that this is a fraction of a typical implementation. Implementations are all about business process and training, hence the difficulty / duration / cost of an implementation depends on the complexity of business and the size of the organization – these two tend to correlate with each other.
It just so happens that all SaaS solutions so far have started (and many stay) at the SMB level, so they are simpler not by virtue of being SaaS but by their target market’s needs.
2 – SaaS is for the SMB market
Yes, traditionally all SaaS started with Small Businesses, but that does not mean it may not move upstream. Salesforce.com and several HCM applications have proven technical scalability, but they offer partial / departmental functionality.
I am a strong believer that in 4-5 years most software developed will be SaaS, and that in 10 years it will be the predominant method of “consuming” software by large enterprises – but I can’t prove it. There’s no empirical evidence, since there has not been any Integrated Enterprise SaaS available so far. The closest to it is NetSuite today (but it’s still SMB focused), and SAP’s Business ByDesign tomorrow. In fact despite SAP’s official positioning, driven by market focus and current limitations (functional and infrastructure), I believe that SAP will use BBD to learn the SaaS game – i.e. BBD will be a test bed for a future Enterprise SaaS offering. But we’re not there yet.
(longer discussion here)
3 – SaaS is bought, not sold, it’s the end of Enterprise Sales
Hey, I’ve said this myself, so it must be true (?). Well, it depends on the position of the sun, the constellation of the stars, and several other factors, but mostly the first two we’ve just covered.
SaaS for very small business: that’s the clear-cut lab case for the click-to buy pull model to work. In fact in this respect (sales model) I believe the business size is the no.1 determinator. Some solutions will have to be configured and may even require pre-sales business process consulting. This inflexion point will clearly be higher for functionally simpler solutions, like CRM and lower for integrated business management systems, like NetSuite or SAP’s Business ByDesign.
Once you reach that inflexion point, you’re in a more interactive, lengthier sales process, and that’s typically face to face. At least that’s what we’re conditioned to: but it does not have to be that way. That will be the subject of another post – to come soon.
Update: Ben Kepes challenged #1 on his blog, and to some extent I have to agree. My post here is continuation of a discussion we started at the virtual SAP Marketing Community Meeting, and my mind-set was still business process software, e.g. CRM, ERP..etc, but I forgot to specify that. Instead of replicating the argument, why don’t you read my response to his response at Ben’s place.
YahoOL
Posted on April 10, 2008 ·
This is a shameless reprint of my post exactly two months ago:
Yahoo running to AOL to avoid assimilation by the (Micro-)Borg? Hm… I don’t know which one is worse. (Actually, I do.) The funny (actually, sad) thing is, most of my Best MicroHoo quotes apply to a Yahoo/AOL situation, you just have to replace Microsoft with AOL
Personally, I think the Microsoft and Yahoo matchup is like two tired swimmers who bump into each other and then wind up drowning each other in their scramble to survive. But Yahoo will be the first to go under in this embrace.
It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.
Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards.
Oh, well… a sad soap opera. 
Related posts (a few of the many): Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch, BoomTown, BloggingStocks, Technology news, Tech Beat, HipMojo.com, Deal Journal, Mark Evans, TECH.BLORGE.com, BuzzMachine , MarketingVOX
Benchmarking: No Longer the Hidden Business Model in SaaS
Posted on April 9, 2008 ·
The cat is out of the bag – was my first reaction when FreshBooks announced the launch of their new benchmarking service in October 2006. Then, and later I called it the hidden business model in SaaS:
He basically announced the hidden value proposition enabled by SaaS: competitive benchmarking. All previous benchmarking efforts were hampered by the quality of source data, which, with all systems behind firewalls was at least questionable. SaaS providers will have access to the most authentic data ever, aggregation if which leads to the most reliable industry metrics and benchmarking.
With Google’s entry today, benchmarking is no longer the hidden business model: it has just gone mainstream. Potentially great value added service, a new revenue source for the provider, which may even allow them to give the core service away for free.
Give away? Do you think I’m smoking something? Read Jeremiah Owyang who predicted that storage companies will (?) eventually pay for your data. 
Related post: Dennis @ AccMan Pro,
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