Software Archives - Page 18 of 71

WebWare 100 Proves We Don’t Like Work

Posted on April 21, 2008 ·

The 2008 Webware 100 winners have just been announced. Over half the votes went to the top 10 winners: Facebook,Firefox, Google, iTunes, MySpace, YouTube, DeviantArt, Friendster, Gaia Online and Maxthon.

Here’s the full winner list, the top 100 web applications selected by 1.9 million voters.

Now, what about that “we don’t like work”? Well, out of all catogories Productivity attracted the least active voting, only 64,000 votes in total. Incidentally it’ sthe category I am typically interested in – a sure sign that I must have my head screwed on the wrong way. This was also the category fatally skewed last year, at Webware 2007, when it was lumped together with Commerce, and of course got dominated by giants like Amazon, eBay and PayPal.

This year I’m glad to see Productivity become a category on its own, and the winners are (click on the icons for detail):

Congratulations to all the winners, many of whom will be present at the Web 2.0 Expo starting in San Francisco tomorrow.

Filed Under: SaaS · Tagged: productivity, web20expo, webapps, webware, webware100, wep applications

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.

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: bill gates, cloud computing, email, gmail, Google, microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook, SaaS, xobni, zoho

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:

Introduction of Role-based Security Administration

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

Enhancements in product Customization & Data Administration

Multi-language Support (11 Languages)

SSL Support for Professional & Enterprise Version

Integration with Zoho Sheet

Improved Business Functionality

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

Wiki-based Context-sensitive Help

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).

Filed Under: Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: crm, Enterprise Software, erp, On-Demand, SaaS, salesforce.com, small business software, smb, sme, zoho

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.

Filed Under: Enterprise Software, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: business bydesign, netsuite, On-Demand, pull-model, SaaS, sap, sap bbd, small business software, smb, sme, software sales

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

Stowe Boyd:

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.

Fake Steve Jobs:

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.

Filed Under: Business, Software · Tagged: acquisition, aol, feke steve jobs, fsj, Humor, mergers, microsoft, yahoo

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.

SAP Marketing Community Virtual Meeting

Posted on April 7, 2008 ·

I’ve said before, software giant SAP is a company that “gets” social media. Heck, their Global Marketing group even has a VP focused on Social Media. He’s now running a rather unique experience on a grand scale: a virtual Marketing Community Meeting, with some 2000 SAP marketers worldwide, using a Unisfair virtual conference center.

The prelude to the meeting already started with blogging activity, using Jive’s Clearspace community platform. I’m truly honored to have been invited as part of a select group of external bloggers to participate, along with:

Now there’s only one thing missing: a link to the actual event site. I can’t link ( for now?), since it’s an internal, behind-the-firewall event. I hope Steve and team will eventually be able to review the material created here, and eventually release some (most?) of it to the general public. Not only because it represents intellectual value to share, but because it would be consistent with SAP striving to be an open, conversational company.

Update (6/4): This post is now #5 for the Google search SAP marketing. That’s insane. (but I don’t mind)

Filed Under: Enterprise Software, Social Networking · Tagged: Blogging, Clearspace, Enterprise Software, enterprise software marketing, erp, marketing, sap, Unisfair, virtual marketing, virtual meeting

Wiki Review or Rant?

Posted on April 1, 2008 ·

I am deeply interested in wikis, and business oriented ones in particular, in fact was considering doing a fairly detailed comparative study, so I got really excited seeing on twitter that Tom Raftery posted an Enterprise wiki review. Too bad it’s not a review; it’s a rant that lacks any methodology or real comparison.

He goes at length describing the installation nightmare:

The setup of the Confluence wiki was far from straightforward. It took two of us the best part of a day to simply install it. Remember that as I was doing this for it@cork, this was not billable time. I was installing it on my own server and because Confluence requires TomCat as its webserver it had to run on a separate port to Apache. This meant several people couldn’t view it in their organisations.

Sounds to me like a case of bad platform choice. Now, I am by far not as technically inclined as Tom is, and am biased: I won’t touch anything that needs to be installed. That’s what Software as a Service is for. Which, incidentally is an available option for Confluence, so how Tom got into comparing “hard-to-install” Confluence with hosted PBwiki and Socialtext is beyond me – it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. And there’s not much of a comparison either… here’s all he has to say about two other products:

By the way, I did also try out DekiWiki and Twiki but I ruled them out quite early on.

That’s not a very detailed review, if you ask me. DekiWiki is downloaded about 3000 times a day (!), so some people must like it… even though their acquisition of SocialText was just an April 1 joke.

Joke apart, a word on picking the right tool for the right job: perhaps you don’t even need an “enterprise class” wiki for a conference. The official Oracle Wiki is based on Wetpaint, a decidedly consumer and community-focused platform.

My personal takeaway from this to me is to look at PBWiki: when I last checked it out, it was a baby-wiki for some reason popular in geek circles; apparently it has grown up. I’m not sure I will get to do the wiki review I’ve been planning, but in the meantime if Tom decides to write a real one, I am looking forward to reading it.

Update: Tom responded in a comment below. The hosted version of Confluence is NOT available under the community license. He ruled out DekiWiki as when he figured he could not to create Groups. There’s more, please read his comment.

Filed Under: Collaboration, SaaS · Tagged: atlassian, Collaboration, confluence, dekiwiki, mindtouch, pbwiki, socialtext, wetpaint, wiki, wikis

SVASE VC Breakfast with Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Posted on March 28, 2008 ·

After a long break I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club meeting next Thursday, April 3rd in San Francisco. As usual, it’s an informal round-table where 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc. This time we”ll have the honor of welcoming Ann Winblad, Partner, co-Founder of the first exclusively software-focused venture firm, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

These breakfast meetings are a valuable opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

It’s a pressure-free environment, with no PowerPoint presentations, live demos, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation; but it does not mean you should come unprepared!
Follow a structure, don’t just roam about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is.
Don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.
It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds…
Write down and practice your pitch, and prepare to deliver a compelling story in 2-3 minutes. You will have about 8-10 minutes, the first half of which is your pitch, but believe me, whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story. The second half of your time-slot is Q&A with the VC.
Bring an Executive Summary; some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I even have to bring this up. Arriving an hour late to a one-and-a-half-hour meeting is NOT acceptable, but we’ve had too many such incidents, so here’s a new rule: if you’re late by more than 20 minutes, you will not be allowed to join the session.

Here’s the event info page, and remember to register – the previous event with Hummer Winblad sold out in advance.

See you in San Francisco!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Software, Startups · Tagged: entrepreneurship, startup pitch, Startups, SVASE, vc Funding, venture Capital

TechCrunch Releases New Zoho Service: Invoice

Posted on March 27, 2008 ·

Yes, the title isn’t a mistake: TechCrunch is no longer just powerful media, Mike now can single-handedly release new products.. Today I spent several hours testing a pre-release product, Zoho Invoice, which was a few weeks from it’s planned launch, when TechCrunch accidentally posted the news. The Zoho Team decided to play along, and instead of disappointing TC readers with a broken link, opted to release the product immediately.

Not exactly an orderly Launch, but not the end of the world either, especially not for Zoho, which has a reputation of updating their web-based products frequently. In my early testing today I found Invoice easy to use, with a soothing, pleasant UI where all the icons are in the right place and support the right information flow. There are some features that were still under consideration as of this afternoon – so be it, this is a “forced” early release, updates and fixes will no doubt be coming soon (using the Feedback button at the top will help issues get fixed quickly).

So what do we have here? Essentially a billing application, that allows the user to create /import Clients, define items (product/service), generate estimates, convert them to invoice and accept payment against it. The Home screen is a Dashboard, providing a quick financial overview:

Information flows easily from one document to another, and there are a number of predefined (customizable) templates that can generate notification emails to the Customer at any stage. Notice the icons change on these two bars:

The Estimate (emailed or snail-mailed to the Customer) can be converted to an Invoice, but when displaying an Invoice, there’s a new icon there to enable entering a payment received.

There are transactional detail, summary, aging ..etc reports to help keep tight control of your receivables.

Although Zoho is primarily known for being the best Web-based Office / Productivity Suite provider, they are not exactly new to transactional business systems: their longest standing product is Zoho CRM (which is an understated name for a mini-ERP), the recently announced Zoho People, and a more full-featured Accounting system is in the works, too. Talk about CRM, it already has some Invoice functionality, which will later be replaced by the new module, to be integrated with CRM. For now, Zoho Invoice is integrated with Projects.

The slideshow below explains the setup, various functions and the workflow between them (click the lower right corner to switch to full-screen):

The new billing application is free up to 5 invoices a months, and there is a pricing scale depending on the number of invoices per month, from $5 incl. 25 invoices to $35 up to 1500 invoices.

The two notable competitors are BlinkSale and FreshBooks. Zoho will no doubt build on the fact that Invoice is just one piece in the puzzle of 16 or so business applications it has to offer.

(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho)

Related posts: Webware.com, Enterprise Alley, Venture Beat, Zoho Blogs,

Filed Under: SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: billing, blinksale, business software, crm, freshbooks, SaaS, smb, Web Applications, zoho, zoho crm, zoho invoice