Connecting the dots ...
I called it a Software Marketing Prank, but hey, apparently customers do listen…
…and they vote with their feet checkbook. Today NetSuite claims over 500 customer defected from Sage to NetSuite. Make no mistake, this is not simply one software company “stealing” another one’s business…
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
Fellow Enterprise Irregular Evangelos Simoudis is definitely worth following. As an active Venture Capitalist he often focuses on his portfolio experience – but through that micro-lense gives us an overview of the market, “The State of SaaS” per se, confirming / contradicting based on real life, real companies what many of us see as trends.
One such essay is Insight as a Service. It’s about what I called the “hidden business model enabled by SaaS” in 2006: using aggregated data for benchmarking. Four years later it’s no longer hidden, but a growing business with great future:
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)
In the 90’s I used to laugh at friends who all used Yahoo! as their personal email service. I did not understand how anyone could put up with the slow speeds of web-mail, and tried to convince them to install a decent email client, like Outlook, which is what most of them used in their corporate jobs.
Then things changed: Outlook grew into a bloated monster, it brought otherwise fairly speedy computers to a grinding halt and finding stuff in the archives of years of email became a gargantuan job. A new web-based email service came to rescue: Gmail was fast, well-organized, included productivity-boosters like labels and conversation-threading, and most importantly, you could not only search but also find old email in seconds! For this former Outlook-fan the switch was a no-brainer – in fact I ended up ditching almost all desktop software, moving online. (Gmail for mail and Zoho for most other tasks).
Life was good, I stayed productive and Gmail grew into a suite of productivity services by Google. Too bad it’s breaking down – again…
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)
Recently I’ve been experimenting with Google Latitude: I wanted to see if I could use it to replace the “family locator” function that most mobile carriers offer at a premium price. This would require that your child or elderly parent or whoever’s whereabouts you care about carries the phone in their pocket with the display off, while it continues to send its location to you.
No can do. Partly due to Latitude, partly due to the mobile carrier. The problem with Latitude, at least on Android 2.1 is that as soon as the phone goes to sleep, your GPS shuts off – I understand it as default to save battery life, but Latitude should offer the option to continue using GPS, if I so chose.
Without GPS …
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)
Twitter is abuzz this morning with MySQL news:
What these messages refer to is that Oracle dropped InnoDB from the free Classic Edition, it is now only available starting with the $2,000 Standard Edition. A few days ago we heard support prices were increased – none of this should come as a surprise, the writing had been on the wall ever since Sun’s acquisition by Oracle. And of course it’s not only MySQL, all Open Source products are on uncertain grounds – there’s a reason why many of the OpenOffice folks split off and are now supporting the new fork, LibreOffice.
I don’t pretend to be the Open Source expert, thankfully we have one, Krish, who recently chimed in on the issue. What I want to do this morning is to take this opportunity to publish an internal email from a smart software CEO who instructed his teams to migrate away from MySQL several months ago. While he wishes to remain anonymous, this is not a leak, I am publishing it with his permission. (Yeah, I know, a leak would have made this story a lot juicier…). Here’s the email:
I posted this internally to an employee question why I am asking our company to move away from MySQL towards Postgres (instead of Ingres).
I would answer the “Why not Ingres” with one word: GPL.
Let’s step back and think about the “People are angry with what Oracle is doing with MySQL” statement. Actually why could Oracle do this with MySQL? How was it possible for Oracle to do this? After all MySQL is “open source” and could be “forked” right?
To be honest, I had long anticipated this move on the part of Oracle…
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)
There’s a debate going on about 37Signal’s “hidden” “unannounced” price increase of their popular Basecamp service.
Apparently most of the uproar wasn’t so much due to the price hike itself, but the fact that it happened without any announcement.
Cinovate Cinovate Cloud Inn.
Why did 37 Signal’s Basecamp price double unannounced? http://bit.ly/bLan2a Contact Cinovate for a Force.com based Basecamp killer app.
canadatechnews Canada Tech Eqentia
Why did 37 Signal’s Basecamp price double unannounced? http://eqent.me/caOkNV
TechvibesTO TechvibesTO
Why did 37 Signal’s Basecamp price double unannounced? http://ht.ly/19GKlt
Not everyone agrees:
@benkepes Ben Kepes
If people have a problem with #BaseCamp #37Signals pricing they have two options, shut up or move on. No big deal cc/ @jasonfried
Hm. I guess STFU is an answer, too. On the other hand, competitors are ready to take advantage of the situation:
mikeerickson Mike Erickson
If you dont like the #basecamp price hike, check out #teambox!
bluecamroo BlueCamroo
Don’t like #basecamp price rise? Try #BlueCamroo. Project Management and Social CRM with Twitter from $24.99 p.m. http://bit.ly/c68rkR
Zoho (longtime CloudAve sponsor) even offered a conversion tool: BUMP. (not to be mixed up with the iPhone / Android BUMP)
But 37Signals Founder Jason Fried came back with a surprising statement:
This isn’t accurate. We have not raised prices. Our prices have been steady for years. Max is still $149. Premium is still $99. Plus is still $49. Basic is still $24. Free is still free. Same prices as last week, last month, last quarter, last year, two years before that, etc. Each plan has the exact same levels and features and projects and disk space as before.
So who is right? And more importantly, where is the $24 Basic Plan?
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
I envy software marketing types. They get to stay kids forever: pull pranks and even get paid for it.:-)
Today’s example comes courtesy of TechCrunch: PayPal competitor WePay dropped a 600lbs ice block at the entrance of the Paypal developer conference. They got chased away and Moscone security removed the ice block. My question: who gets the money? Those are real dollar bills in the ice…
But don’t for a minute think it’s only at startup-land where 20-somethings rule.. the enterprise gray-hairs like pranks, too. Below are some gems from the past.
NetSuite raining on Sage‘s parade conference:
NetSuite is quite a regular at competitor conferences, see their trucks at SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE conference:
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
I love my iPad. I hate my iPad. Was preparing to dump it for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, until it turned out to be a 7”-er now. Size matters, after all (or is it just my eyes?).
So I got momentarily excited reading about the HP Slate 500 but that was a short moment. The new business-focused device is based on Windows 7. Now, as a former victim of Vista I’ll be the first one to admit that Windows 7 is a stable, good operating system. For the PC. It’s just not meant for a tablet. Even if you call it a slate. The proof comes at the 27th second of this engadget video (the best part of which is the leading commercial. The kids are cute
)
Yes, you have to touch items from …
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
Or at least customers using SAP are making cool things… 
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
I’ve been long-time Gmail fan, having used it from the very early days, for almost 5 years now. The key reasons why I switched and have stuck with the service ever since were the productivity boosters, first of all:
Google did to email what all new product teams should: throw away all known concepts, start from fresh, figure our what the system should really do, instead of delivering a customary system with minor improvements. Instant success. Instant Customers. No, correct that: instant users. There is a difference. Apparently not everyone likes “radically new”.
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
I do most of my business blogging there, with occasional asides here. More...
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