People write a lot about SaaS and focus on the famous “no-software” phrase that Marc Benioff coined. What many people fail to discuss is that the SaaS model, even if one ignores the products themselves, brings real value to customers and puts them in the driver’s seat for the first time. So for once, let’s not talk about technology or delivery mechanisms, but rather focus on the change in the most basic rules of the game that the SaaS revolution is creating, with or without a planning hand from the SaaS companies side. Most of this change is affecting my favorite segment, the Small and medium businesses (SMBs), so let’s talk about how SaaS impacts the way SMBs treat IT. Read the rest of this entry »
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Archives for category: Internet
There is no doubt that SaaS and on demand are here to stay: if five years ago on demand solutions looked like an Internet version of the mainframe days (strong central server, no logic in the terminal, bad user interface… sound familiar?), the SaaS applications of today look appealing and offer a good alternative to the on premise world.
Continuing with the “seven things about Saas” Theme, which started with Seven reasons why SaaS is not main street in SMB and continued with Seven reasons why SaaS will be a great success, I would like to turn to the vendors now and offer some do’s and don’ts for the industry… Read the rest of this entry »
“There is a new SaaS, Something as a Service every month.” This is how I mused a month ago when writing The next SaaS post. Newsweek has the story about the new Amazon reader, Kindle. The device (that looks anything but kindling) will be sold for $399, and will act like an iPod for your books. Kindle will offer more than iPod in one sense: it carries its “iTunes” with it, allowing owners to purchase and download books whenever a wireless network is in sight.
This is new and innovative in the books world but not really new when we think of what Apple did with iTune and iPod. The big difference is that Amazon created a new entry barrier for the avid book reader—buying the Kindle. Different? Yes. For the last 150 years or so, listening to music meant buying a device to play the music. From CD players, Walkmans or MP3 players: we first bought the device, and then bought the content. The music played on our device. Read the rest of this entry »
I was in New York this week and came to think of three very different product innovation problems, stemming from three different root causes. It will be great to get your examples for product innovation issues so I can learn as well…
The first one has to do with one of the simplest products to operate by the user: an elevator. What I am about to describe now happened to every single one of you. Guaranteed. You go in the elevator and press on your floor button. Say 47. The full elevator is getting empty around floor 12, but floors 13, 14 and 41 buttons are lit. You really want to get to your room (you know, nature calls after a long day out) but the mindless lift will stop four times before you get there. Why four if only 3 extra buttons were pressed? Aha… This is the man in the 37th that pressed both up and down buttons when he actually wanted to go down and now is showing you a blank face. How come there is no “Cancel” button that allows you to cancel the unneeded stops or the up button that was mistakenly pressed??? Read the rest of this entry »
The long tail has been here forever. Seth Godin ended his blog post about the topic with the following: “The question isn’t, “Is this real?” The question is: “What are you doing about it?” Since I aim to please, I sat right away trying to help the readers answering this question: What should I do about the long tail? Read the rest of this entry »
I actually didn’t plan to write about Facebook any more. In my recent post I claimed that Facebook is not solving any real problem. My readers were kind enough to prove me wrong… Jason thought we were just too old, and Jose thought that the problem Facebook is solving is loneliness. This is a big one to solve and a very good point… I scratched my head trying to reconcile the disconnect: Facebook is obviously successful and some people think they cannot live without it (one of the commenters, Radha, tested his strength by not logging into the ‘book for few days—this is how addicting it is). So how come so many people love it and so many others cannot understand the buzz? Read the rest of this entry »
While everyone in the tech industry was busy with who was briefed about Google OpenSocial, Shai Agassi launched his ambitious automotive business model. To me, both stories belong in “Advanced Business Strategies” class and show how much the high-tech industry has advanced over the last 15 years and turned to be a driving force and a thought leader for the entire global economy. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a new SaaS—“Something as a Service” every month. First came the term SaaS—Software as a Service. Marc Benioff coined PaaS—Platform as a Service. Amazon came along with HaaS- hardware as a Service, and Zoli brought the latest one: CaaS—Car as a Service, in response to Shai Agassi’s launch of better place project.
If we learn from history, almost every service started as a product one owned and maintained, which turned into a service over time. Adam and Eve were the first known couple, but shortly thereafter, the first prostitute emerged, offering the real first SaaS: “Spouse as a Service.”
Banks are no more than fancy language for VaaS: Vaults as a Service. With urbanization, people started moving from villages to big cities, only to meet the DaaS concept: “Dwelling as a Service,” a huge industry (house and apartment rentals) until these very days. Read the rest of this entry »
I am a great believer in SaaS (Software as a service) as a future leading delivery mechanism for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Although SaaS penetration into this space is slow, there are many reasons for SaaS to prevail. It may take a while, and it will require a leap of faith from the customers and hard work from the vendor side, but it will happen. 0.9 probability as my Gartner friends taught me to say…Here are the seven reasons why SaaS is better than the current delivery mechanisms (namely software on a CD). Read the rest of this entry »
It was the week of Web 2.0, the annual conference that celebrates the new new new web. Tracking the news from the conference, it was clear that the new web still mainly targets consumers and individuals, and did not make any significant headway into the small- and mid-size business space (SMB). A quick scan of the tech news this week (all thanks to good old techcrunch) reveals that the industry is focused on photo editing, Internet TV, and web 2.0 mashups for your car. Even applications that are more business-oriented, like InterviewUp, are focused on the individuals (interviewees) and not on the interviewers. Read the rest of this entry »
