Category: SaaS

Dec 13 2005

Buzzsaw: second-most widely used ASP?

At AECnews.com, Randall Newton offers a Reporter’s Notebook: A Day at the Virtual Builders Roundtable, a US event organised by practitioners for practitioners. From his notes, two items stood out to me. First: "The general consensus regarding FTP (File Transfer Protocol) as a tool for collaboration seems to be, if you still have FTP hanging …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/12/at_aecnewscom_r/

Dec 01 2005

Why do insurers overlook the advantages of extranets?

Reading Silicon.com today, I was struck by a leader article: Insurers must account for disaster recovery, which argues that insurers fail to reward those businesses which take a responsible attitude to data back-up and security. Apparently, when it comes to insuring businesses with multimillion-pound liabilities, insurers often pay little or no regard to where and …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/12/reading_silicon/

Nov 07 2005

‘old DOS trying to do new tricks’

I liked John Naughton’s article, Pitiful spectacle of an old DOS trying to do new tricks, in yesterday’s Observer newspaper – not least for the witty title, but also for his analysis of Microsoft’s ‘On Demand’ vision announced last week (see my post). He mentions Harvard academic Clayton Christensen, who looked at why successful companies …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/11/i_liked_john_na/

Nov 03 2005

Microsoft to go ‘on demand’

News (eg: BBC article Microsoft hails ‘strategic shift’) that Microsoft is going to push into online services marks "a revolution," according to Bill Gates, in how the company thinks about software. It is perhaps also a belated acceptance of the challenge posed by application service provider (ASP) businesses such as Salesforce.com who have rejected the …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/11/microsoft_to_go-2/

Oct 17 2005

Gorillas and minnows?

I occasionally dip into ‘Microscope’ IT magazine. This week’s edition has a piece about Salesforce.com and how its hosted CRM solution could be squeezed by the software "mammoths". The latter (including Oracle, Sage, Microsoft and SAP) are incentivising their resellers with bounties to take SME customers away from Salesforce.com – such a strategy appears to …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/10/gorillas_and_mi/

Oct 07 2005

SaaS: view from the trenches

An ASPnews.com article presents some of the pros and cons of Software as a Service (SaaS) from the perspective of an independent software vendor (Chris Miranda of eMeta) who is clearly an SaaS enthusiast. He added a couple of advantages that I hadn’t fully realised. One argument that will find favour with softwaver vendors is …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/10/saas_view_from_/

Oct 04 2005

Charging crisis (2)

In my initial Charging crisis post I wondered about the ‘elephant hunter’ sales person analogy. BIW CEO Colin Smith has filled in a gap in my knowledge. In IT businesses, apparently, sales personnel were advised to nurture three different types of account: ‘rabbits’ that could be converted into frequent, small sales; ‘deer’ that would yield …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/10/charging_crisis_1/

Oct 01 2005

Charging crisis

A few years ago, printed magazines used to take precedence over my online reading, now it’s the other way round – which is one reason why I only just picked up on the lead article ‘Charging Crisis’ in Information Age magazine. The crisis relates to traditional software licensing, which, the article suggests, is being challenged …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/10/charging_crisis/

Sep 19 2005

Real-time collaboration

Through silicon.com, I found an interesting white paper from Web-Ex. While not focused on construction collaboration or extranet technologies, it had some interesting points to make about employing an externally hosted solution. In passing, I was struck by a new abbreviation. The paper quotes research by the Service and Support Professionals Association and Tech Strategy …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/09/realtime_collab/

Sep 16 2005

The “Software as a service” Age

I notice Bill Gates is reported as saying the "software as a service" age is here. Nothing new in such an announcement from Microsoft. Some of their products have now moved forward a bit, of course, but also Microsoft is looking over its shoulder at ASP businesses such as salesforce.com. If you’re interested in knowing …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2005/09/the_software_as/

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