by Guy Creese | May 28, 2010 | 1 Comment
How a vendor performs sales, marketing, development, and support differs greatly between whether the vendor delivers the solution through SaaS or software. This is important to understand, because it means that a great software house doesn’t necessary field a great SaaS solution–at least not in the beginning–and vice versa. The parts that don’t differ are [...]
Category: SaaS Tags: Software as a service
by Guy Creese | May 27, 2010 | Comments Off
Training end users on how to use a SaaS system trails off more than with a software system (which is more episodic). For example, if an enterprise has just adopted Salesforce.com, end users need to be trained on its general layout and how to use it. After that, because new features trickle in from time [...]
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Category: SaaS Web Analytics Tags: Software as a service
by Guy Creese | May 26, 2010 | 1 Comment
I’ve several posts comparing and contrasting SaaS and software. So far, the thread consists of: SaaS vs. Software: The Release Cycle for SaaS is Usually (Not Always) Faster SaaS vs. Software: Their Licensing Needs to Be Integrated SaaS vs. Software: SaaS Has a Built-In Usage Feedback Loop SaaS vs. Software: The Pros and Cons of [...]
Category: SaaS Web Analytics Tags: Software as a service
by Guy Creese | May 25, 2010 | Comments Off
A recent post on Peter O’Kelly’s blog took me to a web site entitled, “PLATO History: Remembering the Future,” which focuses on the history of PLATO, a computer system originally developed at the University of Illinois. As a blurb for the PLATO @ 50 Conference states, “Come find out what social software, e-learning, online community, [...]
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Category: Uncategorized Tags: Education, IBM Lotus Notes, Instant messaging, PLATO @ 50 Conference, Ray Ozzie
by Guy Creese | May 24, 2010 | 6 Comments
Software pricing is usually a large up-front cost; SaaS typically is pay-as-you-go. This difference leads to the pluses and minuses of SaaS pricing. The pros of SaaS pricing are: It’s cash friendly: Financially, the SaaS license fees are treated as an operating expense on the income statement, rather than as an asset burning a hole [...]
Category: SaaS Tags: Software as a service
by Guy Creese | May 21, 2010 | Comments Off
One capability of SaaS that’s rarely discussed is the fact that it contains a built-in usage feedback loop. Software, whether running on a client or a server, is pretty much an island. Once a vendor releases the product, the software runs on its own and sends very little usage information back to the vendor. This [...]
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Category: Google Microsoft Web Analytics Tags:
by Guy Creese | May 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Analysts talk about the need for a single platform that can run in-house or in the cloud, but not a lot has been written about the growing need for a single licensing model as well. In the SaaS world, this is crucial. We’ve seen a lot of interest from clients in SaaS-based e-mail–as long as [...]
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Category: SaaS Tags: Licensing, Mike Gotta, SaaS
by Guy Creese | May 20, 2010 | Comments Off
There’s an interesting article in Computerworld entitled, “EFF: Forget cookies, your browser has fingerprints.” It talks about a recent Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report that states that a web site can use JavaScript to gather information about a user’s browser, operating system, fonts, and plug-ins, and munge them together to develop a unique “fingerprint” for [...]
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Category: Web Analytics Tags: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Personally identifiable information
by Guy Creese | May 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Microsoft and Capgemini Group today announced that Capgemini will market and sell Microsoft BPOS (online versions of Exchange, SharePoint, OCS, and Live Meeting) within its Infostructure Transformation Services group. The interesting thing here is that back in September 2007, Capgemini made a big splash in announcing that it would market and sell Google Apps Premier [...]
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Category: Google Microsoft Tags: Capgemini, Capgemini Group, Google, Microsoft
by Guy Creese | May 18, 2010 | Comments Off
This is the first in a series of posts I plan to write comparing and contrasting the strengths of SaaS and software. Many people view SaaS as just software running on a web server. While true, that’s a viewpoint that misses the nuances of SaaS–and its the nuances that make all the difference. SaaS vendors [...]
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Category: Google Tags: Google, Google Gears, IBM, Microsoft, Software as a service
