A Meaningful Life

One of our Saasu customers optimises Web 2.0 in it’s original meaning. He uses 88miles.net for tracking time on projects against customers and uses Saasu.com for his accounting ledger, tax and so on. 88miles and Saasu’s API’s have a little chat during the day keeping all his stuff in line, like a couple of fax machines having a banter. bidi bidi bidi beeeeep bidi bidi bidi —– Don’t you love that, it’s not humans having to do it!

What the customer actually has is a virtual application. Two distinct applications developing and enhancing separately but operating as one. Very cool.

Portfolio managers use tools to optimise placement of investments. It’s all about rigour and hard maths. So to should we optimise how we spend our time. It’s all too easy to concentrate on money, it’s in your face day in and day out, but people forget to act on the well known truth that time is money. You cannot separate the two.

Myles Eftos of Madpilot Productions built the 88miles.net connector, so a hat tip to the mad pilot. Check out his blog he shoots from the hip which is just how I like it.

One of Australia’s top IT Journo’s brad Howarth wrote Saasu up in his lastest Dynamic Business article on Automating Businesses. I’m a product person and often struggle trying to write how I feel about our product (I’m confident I’m not alone). Brad just seems to have the knack of communicating it without all the ‘tech’.

Many SaaS applications also feature in-built connections to other SaaS tools, quickly creating a web of interconnected applications that can automatically send data among themselves.

1. Telco’s online reach is smaller than they think. Sure Telco’s have large customer bases but the only time I have gone to my Telco’s website was when I upgraded my ISP plan. It’s anecdotal I admit. What’s your use of their websites like?
2. Telco’s have bad websites. When I did upgrade my plan, the website navigation experience was agonising. A good analogy is government versus corporate. Their web mail was one of the worst I’ve seen.
3. They are big but that doesn’t guarantee a win. When Telco’s spend to compete they serve up a high Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) number for their competitors to squeeze them against. Lean startups can squeeze margins tighter, and if they can hang on to triple digit growth rates then they can drop a big Telco Goliath with a very small stone.
4. Telco’s are good at being Utilities, full stop. This is appliance market versus utility market difference. Just because your toaster is an appliance on an electricity network doesn’t mean your electricity utility will be a good toaster maker. They are very different markets, very different sales approaches, very different products and require very different people to execute.
5. Lessons learn’t. Many Telco’s have already tried and failed. Telco’s, since 2000, have been desperately trying to replace falling fixed-line revenues. They just didn’t understand these web business, the appliances of the net. The revenue messiah didn’t come. Consumers were flocking to cool niche shops like iTunes not the big Telco department stores.
6. Telco’s had the wrong skill set. Telco’s are big ships. Changing the crew from sailors to steam engineers wasn’t and still isn’t quick or easy. Even worse, short web application lifecycles requires you to destroy your mother ship by building newer and better technology quickly. Telco’s extract long term value from long term fixed assets. Two years is frightening when you normally invest for twenty years in fixed assets.
7. Web business’s tend to invent. Telco’s tend to be slow followers while web startups who successfully commercialise have tended to come from the womb of inventiveness. University assignments (Google), for the fun of it (YouTube) or everyday business problems that need fixing (Salesforce.com). Telco’s tend not to think this way.

We have heard from our contacts that flooding in Mackay (Australia) recently caused accounting practices and businesses a major data recovery problem due to software based accounting files being lost in the floods. Obviously anyone using SaaS accounting (Software-as-a-Service online accounting) would have escaped the pain that data loss can cause a business.

Our Saasu.com data centre retains client data well clear of flood zones and data centres floors and entrances are purposely raised for localised flooding protection from burst water mains and other problems that can occur.

Datafiles for old style accounting software are only as good as your last backup. If you haven’t backed up recently here’s a knock knock reminder. Else, change to online accounting and other online services and outsource that task!

The old school software industry is under huge economic, cyclical and competitive pressure. Dogs growl and bite when backed into corners. Some comments I have been reading on recent posts about SaaS are highlighting the pressure which is now extending to CIO’s and CFO’s. These key decision makers are having to decide whether to keep paying big license fees to old school software companies in the face of much cheaper, safer and more reliable SaaS offerings. It causes decision stress I’m sure. In my opinion the smart ones are researching the topic and going to SaaS.

A recent survey by searchCIO.com saw some suggestion that SaaS might be fad like by a commentator. I would never consider SaaS being fad like due to the clear dependency many off us already have on the SaaS offerings such as online banking and online e-mail.

Here’s another 170 billion dollar reason SaaS isn’t fad like - Google. The world’s biggest SaaS utility.

I don’t know about you but Google has never sent me any software disks or cd’s. I’m pretty damn sure I sign into their servers with lots of other people at the same time (multi-tenant) from anywhere in the world (online) via a web browser. They maintain and backup my stuff (service). They upgrade their online applications without making me put a CD in my PC (service). This is SaaS plain and simple. They are a utitlity that I buy (or get for free) my software from, as a service.

Thanks to Ben at Diversity. His colleague, Paul made comment on that article which contained the flickr of SaaS resistance. It was spot on. Sorry I mean’t “flicker” not “flickr”.

p.s. Flickr.com is a SaaS photo album I use. Check it out, it’s very cool. They do all the backups, burn CD’s for me and and provide private access to my albums for my family and friends for less than $30 a year. Access, security, distribution, backups, upgrades are all part of your typical SaaS offering.

Time to clock off.

p.p.s if you need a SaaS Bundy Clock and Time Tracking system then check out 88miles.net (they just built a Saasu connector). If you sign up to both Saasu.com and 88miles.net then I’ll make sure you get a free three month Saasu.com subscription extension.