Postcards from the Edge : SaaS

Congrats to Xero team

claireoh — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:33:00 GMT

Bit of a milestone for my mate Mr Drury and his team of star players in Wellington, NZ, last week. Listing on the stock exchange is Xero's first step towards world domination me thinks.

Warm fuzzy feeling seeing this. They are a great bunch, it's a killer Web 2.0 app, and I can't wait to help them take on the UK SMB market later this year. Bring it on. I was lucky enough to spend a few days out there and see it in the flesh. Dodgy photo though :-)

BT Microsoft Innovation

claireoh — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:59:00 GMT

Perhaps not something I thought I would be writing in the same sentence!! With BT in Redmond (Seattle) at the moment. Have to say, it's been a really great two days. The briefing session was really valuable. Though the highlight for me is getting new Nike Air trainers with a chip in that talks to my (new, red) ipod nano. Isn't technology marvellous. Just presented to the group on ISV and Innovation Leadership. Think it went down well. Gosh....there's so much potential....and so much to do.

With the launch of Applications Marketplace last week, we've got an interesting time ahead. Some coverage starting to appear now from ZDNet, IT Week, IT Pro and a rather amusing piece from the ever-controversial The Register.

One thing I know is going to deliver some really great apps for marketplace is the Topcoder competition - check it out here and here.

Watch the Video on SaaS Incubation Centres

BT Applications Marketplace launched on 25th April

claireoh — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:05:00 GMT

April 25, 2007

BT Business launches unique online software supermarket for UK businesses

Creates new channel to market for ISVs and delivers wide ranging software to help small businesses thrive

BT Business, in partnership with Microsoft, is bringing together specialist software developers and small business customers with the launch of the BT Applications Marketplace.

The latest initiative, launched at today’s BT Business Experience showcase event, is designed for companies that have developed business-focused hosted applications that are stable, supported and ready for market. It enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to publish and promote their software to small businesses via the dedicated Applications Marketplace web site, a part of BT Tradespace.

For small business users, the BT Applications Marketplace gives them access to a wide range of the latest software specifically designed for their needs, but also means that they can take advantage of using “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) applications. This allows them to pay a monthly subscription for the software they need, removing the need for upfront capital investment, as well as upgrade costs. It also means that small businesses no longer need to manage and support the applications in-house, as that is taken care of by the company supplying the service.

BT Applications Marketplace is part of an £8million investment in delivering SaaS by BT Business. Built on Microsoft’s Connected Services Framework , it brings together Microsoft’s world-leading developer programme with BT’s UK market reach.

BT is empowering developers by providing a set of web service Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and a series of Software Development Kits (SDKs) with a wide range of interfaces, including .NET. API functionality that is currently available includes SMS, voice call, conference call, presence, authentication, user profile, and location. To date, more than 1,700 developers have already registered for BT’s SDKs.

The Applications Marketplace allows ISVs to quickly and easily build a sales site or “Tradespace” that provides a way to promote their applications to the small business market. It includes rating and comment features to allow ISVs to receive user feedback on their application and those offered by other vendors. It also offers a way to interact and exchange information with other members of the Marketplace.

BT Business will actively monitor the feedback and ratings generated by end-users and identify ISV partners whose applications could become part of “Ideas Lab” – its software incubator programme.

BT Business will select certain partners from Ideas Lab to further develop their product and ensure their applications are reliable and secure in a service-based delivery model. These new “services” will ultimately become part of the BT product portfolio and will be supported by its sales and marketing operation, including the UK’s largest sales force dedicated to small businesses.

BT Business are also sponsoring a series of “mash-up” competitions in partnership with Microsoft and TopCoder, based on the Microsoft Connected Services Framework, to encourage developers to merge BT’s telecommunications APIs with other web-based applications and services such as mapping and search. Winners can grab prizes ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 (US).

Bill Murphy, managing director at BT Business, said: “The business market is diverse, with wide-ranging requirements. ISVs are great at understanding the challenges small businesses face and developing specialist applications to help solve them, but often find it difficult to get a foothold in the market. With BT Applications Marketplace we’re bringing together the ISV and small business communities to help developers sell their products and enable end-users to get the benefit from the latest on-demand applications.”

Karl Noakes, channel development director, Microsoft Ltd., said: “There is now a compelling business proposition to embrace SaaS, so Microsoft is delighted to be working in partnership with BT to create an industry-leading ‘shop front’ for ISVs’ hosted business applications. Microsoft is committed to helping its industry-leading partner community develop new processes to capitalise on the evolving business environment. Through Applications Marketplace, BT and Microsoft will help ISVs enter this industry by reducing the cost and complexity of delivering hosted software and crucially, by providing them with a totally new route to market.”

For further information about the BT Applications Marketplace, or to add software to the site, go to: www.isvpartner.bttradespace.com.

To view the BT Applications Marketplace community go to: http://softwareasaservice.community.bttradespace.com.

To get more information on BT’s communications web services and software development kits go to: www.sdk.bt.com.

S + S Architects Forum - 15th May

claireoh — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:46:00 GMT

Overview: Software + Services Architect Forum

The winds of change are blowing across the entire IT landscape driven primarily by the ubiquity of connectivity brought about by the Internet, broadband and lowering costs of hardware and storage. 40% of British consumers now have broadband and 47% of workers do so outside of the office. The lines between home and work, organisation and organisation and country and country are blurring and this heralds a change in how software will be delivered; on premise, on demand and online all-time is becoming a reality and for IT the decision is no longer just build v buy but what to keep and what to let go.

With Microsoft at the very heart of this debate join us at the Architect Forum where we will discuss emerging trends in technology that will affect architects from ISVs, SI to Enterprises alike.

Target audience: Architects, Lead Developers, IT Professionals and Technology Decision Makers

View agenda and register online at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032335942&Culture=en-GB

Going global from NZ

claireoh — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:25:00 GMT

Good to see my mate Rod in the news recently talking about his latest venture: Xero is a SaaS accounting solution for SME's. Read more about their raison d'etre. So why SaaS? Craig in their Development team thinks it's the only way to go.

Rod was also honoured by Microsoft once again this year as an MVP and his latest blogpost features a nice pic of SteveB in NZ! I've v excited at the prospect of meeting SteveB in Hanoi in May when we take a UK ISV delegation over to SE Asia to create cross-border partnerships in the region.

Finance 2.0

claireoh — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:57:00 GMT

Interesting article yesterday in Finextra on Tower Group's view of Web 2.0 adoption in the financial services sector. Tower Group warns that "regulatory compliance represents a major challenge to the take-up of the technology, given that Web 2.0 tools are designed to break down walls and to allow freeform collaboration" and in a related article, Conchango said many of UK's major retail banks and building societies may be reluctant to embrace Web 2.0 applications over fears for their brand.

Recently Gartner encouraged banks to develop Web 2.0 applications "that support multi-channel delivery for personal account information and alerts"...and "to monitor emerging Internet social networks for their potential for partnerships to offer services within the network or to create non-traditional distribution channels by dealing with customers one-to-one".

Read more on Conchango's Web 2.0 blog and worth checking out the McKinsey report on the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies too.

Good Marketing = Chocolate....?

claireoh — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:51:00 GMT

Kevin drew my attention to the interview in Forbes with Marc Benioff where his advice ranges from "Always pitch the bigger picture" to "Never take anything personally" and "Always be relevant" to the rather bizarre "Everyone loves chocolate" marketing strategy. As Easter approaches, I'm wondering how true that statement is. I've a Butler's Irish Easter egg downstairs (from my mother) which will no doubt be offered up to a real chocolate lover while I indulge in something virtuous such as cranberry juice and raisins. Call me weird, but I just don't hanker after chocolate. Unless it's the Green & Black's Organic 70% cocoa solids stuff. Now THAT is worth opening a press kit from salesforce.com for.....

Scottish Enterprise

claireoh — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:37:00 GMT

Some interesting facts from yesterday’s SaaS workshop for ISV partners in Edinburgh delivered by Kevin McGirl at Sales Corporation:

· 8/10 fastest growing technology companies are SaaS (www.sandhill.com)

· Gartner says 25% of all software sales will be SaaS by 2011 and the SaaS market grew 26% last year

· According to IDC:

o Worldwide market will be worth $11bn by 2009;

o How many larger companies are actually purchasing ‘on demand’ solutions? Their SaaS adoption study shows 40% of large companies and 42% of midmarket companies are already doing this;

o Concern about data security is the factor most frequently cited as discouraging the use of SaaS among firms of most sizes.

· Software & information Industry Association (SIIA) survey showed that 57% of ISV’s ranked SaaS as “most important” or “very important”. IT spend was the #1 issue and SaaS was #2 issue.

· Aberdeen Group: 76% of all companies are considering deploying SaaS apps.

· New venture capital is being invested in service models; Over $1bn venture capital is expected to be closed. Read more at www.vcaonline.com

Making the Transition to SaaS? Three Tips:

1. Development focus on service delivery methodologies rather than product features

2. Marketing focus on packaging and pricing services, not technology/products

3. Sales focus on selling benefits

Want an Instant Return on your SaaS strategy? Think:

1. Global

2. Customers for Life

3. Get the right name! (Think: “Snakes on a Plane”!)

4. Services not Software

5. Brand – and rebrand

6. Create “stickiness”

7. Mash Ups! (Think: Apple + Nike)

8. Outsmart don't Outspend (Think: Tom Tom v Navman)

9. Viral Marketing

10. Make it easy to find and easy to buy (e.g. free trial)

How to Build a SaaS application

claireoh — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 12:56:19 GMT

Microsoft has just posted architectural guidelines on how to build a SaaS aplication on our platform. Liteware is a fictitious HR application built using .NET 3.0 and on SQL 2005 and the sample application implements single-instance multi-tenancy patterns. More here.

A Live and Well....

claireoh — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:27:22 GMT

So we've been talking about Live a lot at Microsoft lately. I'm lucky enough to have seen some of the latest thinking coming out of Redmond recently - the paper that is essentially the follow up to Ray Ozzie's famed memo. I might be overestimating the power of this piece of paper but for some reason I am quite nervous carrying it around in my briefcase. Certainly some people I mentioned it to agree that I could possibly take off to a desert island with a sum of cash had I chosen to post it on ebay. Not sure. But for some bizarre reason I did feel a bit like a character out of an Ian Fleming novel engaged in industrial espionage while in that hotel in Copenhagen. Probably as close to being a Bond girl as I'm going to get.

We've just embarked on a plan to survey our ISV partner community about their thoughts on SaaS as a Disruptive Technology. Bower and Christensen wrote a great paper for Harvard Business Review about Catching the Wave back in 1995. The principles of this paper twelve years later are still as valid. They talk about technology innovations having different performance trajectories - the rate at which the product improves over time. Sustaining technologies "give customers something more or better than they already have" while disruptive technologies "introduce different attributes from the one mainstream customers historically value". Do pioneers of new technology dominate the market? How do established companies innovate and invest in disruptive technologies when the market isn't proven?

Just one of the many things occupying our time at the moment. There's no doubt that SaaS has all the attributes of a Disruptive Technology. Question is - how much is it really worth?

I met with one of the lead analysts from IDC today. We were talking about how to quantify the opportunity - particularly for ISV's interested in partnering with Microsoft and BT. We're hoping to produce some revenue scenario's for application developers in the coming weeks ready for the launch of our partner program some time in April.

Interestingly one of the papers Robert brought along to the meeting is called "Show Me the Money" where Matt Davis at IDC ranks the Top 10 Next Generation Services. This was based on a US survey in 2006 where consumers were asked about their willingness to pay for applications - ranging from "not interested if it were free" up to "very interested if the cost was over $20/mth".

Guess what came out on top? Applications that control lighting, heating and other utility functions remotely (from a PC or wireless device) were thought to be highest revenue generating. Wheras applications that create personalised user profiles that deliver TV programs, internet contect and music to the household came in lowest.

Obviously useful in a B2C environment. Now all we've got to do is the same exercise for B2B.

SaaS Support & BT Opportunity

claireoh — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:45:00 GMT

This site has some good info for Developers and I think this one is really good - it has input and webcasts from the guru's Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro.

Read more about what BT are doing here. Leaders from BT were at our Partnering for the Future dinner with some of our innovative partners this week and talked about their vision for Value Added Services. BT are looking for ISV's with 'SaaS ready' solutions for Small Businesses to go on their BT Application Marketplace. You can read a bit more about the criteria for this in the presentation from our recent ISV Innovation Day.

Can Partners Make Money out of Saas?

claireoh — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 19:52:54 GMT

According to David Bradshaw from Ovum (in his paper on the subject published in October) ISV's are "likely to find that SaaS can produce considerable advantages.....not least reducing the buying cycle significantly. SaaS enables users to try the software before they buy it".

He also talks about the implications for Resellers too where "the biggest challenge will be the sales remuneration". How much do you pay your salesperson? Do you award £3k bonus for a contract worth £300k over three years or £1k bonus for £100k contract value in year one? Another issue is "how to transition from one [reward system] to the other".

He concludes by saying that any organisation getting involved in SaaS over the next year or so "should be ready for a period of uncertainty" though adds "not getting involved in SaaS would be an even greater risk". Very similar thinking to what IDC put in their recent paper.

Connections and Conversations....

claireoh — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:26:00 GMT

Isn't technology marvellous. Sat in Terminal 3 at Heathrow - resisting the urge to buy something in the Armani sale and choosing to do email instead. That's dedication for you.

Last night we had a gathering of 'like minded' people in Henley from over 30 partners and from Microsoft looking at how emerging business models and emerging technologies change the way we work together in this Web 2.0 world.

It was a great evening - fine food and wine, great conversations and - more importanly - great connections. The people in the room represented a great variety of companies - start-ups and new firms with great ideas (like Zebtab, Mydeo, Sunergeo and Crisp Thinking) along with more established ISV's with SaaS offerings (Innerworkings, InPhase, Nimbus, Impaq, Nitrosell who have integrated with Office Live already), journalists, Robert from IDC who wrote the recent SaaS paper, people from the investor community (Sheetal Mehta and Alpesh Patel), leaders from BT and even consummate networkers and media guru's like Steve Moore who is involved in Wt2.

We also welcomed Vimal Sethi who leads our Developer and Platform Group in the Gulf region and is keen to replicate some of the work we are doing in the UK and attract more partners into his region. We introduced him to Valentia who have just won some business out there - another Irish partner we met through Enterprise Ireland (like Innerworkings and Nitrosell). Sunergeo are chatting with Conchango and Mobile Sense. Innerworkings are talking to Dot Net Solutions. Vimal and Sheetal - and then Fran and Sheetal - knew each other from a previous life in Silicon Valley. Funny how things come together.

We had our first 'meeting' last October with around 13 partners so it was great to see so many people in the room this time interested in innovation and 'Partnering for the Future'. We've come a long way in three months and by the time we meet again in another three months I think we will have made a lot more progress and have some tangible evidence of what these relationships really can achieve. In summing up last night I said to the group: "Let's make some money, have some fun along the way and make a difference". That's what it's all about. Watch this space....

What is this Web 2.0 thing?

claireoh — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 03:11:37 GMT

In true Web 2.0 style I thought I’d turn to Wikipedia to see what they say on the subject. Quite a lot as it happens. One of our own guru’s at Microsoft, Director of Emerging Technologies – Gurprit Singh – says that Web 2.0 “refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web, made possible by XML, web services APIs, AJAX, RSS and other related technologies that enable a richer client experience primarily via a browser”. Gurprit presented at the recent MediaTech event which showcased some innovative solutions built on disruptive technologies.

One of Gurprit's team told me to check out the J K Rowling site built by Lightmaker as an example of a 'next gen' website utilizing some of the very latest Microsoft technology.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) represents a fundamental shift in the software market – from the delivery of products to the delivery of services. As a go-to-market business model, SaaS is already well established and IDC forecasts that its use will grow significantly over the next four years (over 20% CAGR to be worth $11bn worldwide by 2009 in fact). This very rapid growth is being driven “by a combination of strong end-user demand and software provider competitive positioning”. Download the recent IDC paper on the SaaS opportunity for partners here

“Live” is the Microsoft brand for our online service offerings which include Windows Live (e.g. live.com, messenger.live.com, mail.live.com and more) and Office Live (allowing small businesses create a professional online presence without the expense of IT).

Our software developer partners are already building solutions on top of Office Live to add greater functionality and relevance to customers. Check out the offering from Nitrosell.

Another partner doing some cool stuff is AWS - as their recent awards confirm.

Ray Ozzie, our Chief Software Architect, says the move to Software + Services represents a profound change in the way services are developed, delivered and consumed. Read more about his view of the Web 2.0 world on his blog.

At our Worldwide Partner Conference last summer, Ballmer described Windows Live as "all about using the Internet to remake the software business itself” and said Microsoft would continue to build out new services on the search, content, collaboration, communications and business services fronts. He described Live as epitomizing the "transition our industry will make in next five to ten years” and encouraged Partners to get involved.

"Don't expect impact from Live in the next year," Ballmer said [in 2006] "but now is the time to build out the (Live) platform and define the business model for how we work together." We formed a Live Partner Advisory Council of 22 members comprising 8 UK Partners. This PAC will shape how we go to market with our Partner community. Read more about Ballmer’s thoughts on Web 2.0 here

A few months ago Microsoft announced a program to help ISV’s investigate SaaS – you can read more about that and our Incubation Centre partners here – check out SaaS On Ramp which gives partners access to discounted licenses too. We’ve had a great response from UK partners.

What kind of partners are working with us? ExpressHR, Nimbus and Impaq to name a few. And not just the more established companies either - we are also helping young companies and start-ups such as Sunergeo and Zebtab.

And before you ask….we’re not just aiming to enable partners from a business strategy, technical and a licensing perspective – we are also hoping to have a direct impact on our partners' sales potential by providing new routes-to-market in partnership with companies like BT. This is all part of our Partnering for the Future vision. Get a sneak preview of the opportunity for partners here. Lots more to come on that subject in the coming weeks.