5 Big Ideas for Getting All That Work Done

February 28, 2009 at 12:20 am · Filed under Webinar

No time, no budget, fewer people?  We’ve got 5 big ideas for how to get all the work done.

Join us for a free webinar on March 11, 2009, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm Eastern time.  I will be moderating the discussion and will be joined by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, and Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade. (In case you didn’t guess, that’s me in the middle of those two fine gentlemen.)

In this webinar we will cover:

1. How to automate what you hate — tasks and processes that are time sucks you never noticed or didn’t know you could offload to new tools 

2. How going virtual can help – prudent outsourcing can make more sense than ever
  
3. Why getting “social” at work is good for business – seek technology applications with social media features and that connect you with communities that can provide speedy answers, serve as “free” extensions of your team, connect you to customers faster

4. Why and how to reframe how you think about your job – advice for doing more of what matters and less of what doesn’t

5. How to get your head in the cloud – move more work to the web and save more time and money

We be giving away some copies of our books. Please join us — and be sure to bring your questions too.

The webinar is free, but you do have to reserve a spot — space is limited.

Find out more and register now.

Which Categories of SaaS Are Most Popular?

February 24, 2009 at 9:27 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Web Apps

Gartner, the Research firm, conducted a survey about usage of SaaS (software as a service). It confirmed what many of you already know or suspect: that usage of SaaS is growing. Nearly 90% of organizations expect to maintain or grow their usage of SaaS.

But what I wanted to know was this: what types of software services are companies using? That’s why I found this chart to be particularly helpful, because it shows the categories of SaaS services being used:

The top usage is accounting software (which appears to be used largely by small businesses).  That category is closely followed by sales applications and email applications.  

Interestingly, Web conferencing services did not rank as highly as I expected, falling near the bottom. I would have expected them to be among the more utilized services, especially among enterprises and midsize businesses that need to collaborate.

What the survey suggests is that there is plenty of room for more growth of SaaS, especially among the lower-ranking categories.

You can download a copy of the full Gartner report here.

Magnolia Goes “Poof” - Could That Happen to One of Your Free Apps?

February 22, 2009 at 10:23 pm · Filed under Web Apps

Ma.gnolia, the bookmarking service, suffered a corrupted MySQL database (which also corrupted its backup) and the service is no more.

Larry Halff, the founder speaks frankly in the video below giving a behind-the-scenes look into how Ma.gnolia was run.  As he points out, it may have seemed as if there was a sizeable company behind the site, but during most of the history of the service it was just one person — him.  He calls it a “labor of love” and described how he bankrolled it all.

 http://www.vimeo.com/3205188

Citizen Garden Episode 11: Whither Ma.gnolia? from Larry Halff on Vimeo.
 

Chris Messina, who interviews Larry, says starting at minute 19:15 what you will no doubt be thinking as you watch the video:  that you don’t know what kind of backup and infrastructure and IT practices are being employed in other Web services.

It’s food for thought.  Consider where and with whom to entrust your business data from your small business.

Free - By Itself - Doesn’t Work, Says Chris Anderson

January 31, 2009 at 5:10 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

Chris Anderson, the author of Long Tail and Editor of Wired magazine, writes in today’s Wall Street Journal that in our new economic reality, offering a Web app for free is not a standalone business model. He writes:

What about those companies trying to build a business on the Web? In the old days (that would be until September of last year) the model was pretty simple. 1. Have a great idea. 2. Raise money to bring it to market, ideally free to reach the largest possible market. 3. If it proves popular, raise more money to scale it up. 4. Repeat until you’re bought by a bigger company.

Now steps 2 through 4 are no longer available. So Web startups are having to do the unthinkable: come up with a business model that brings in real money while they’re still young.

Actually, that was never a business model for a Web or software business itself. The underlying Web application, if it was completely free and unsustainable by advertising revenue, never had a business model.

Sure, there was a business model — of entrepreneurs “flipping” startups.  They were never in the software business, they were in the business of incubating companies and turning them over quickly.  Comparing them to a software business is like comparing a house flipper to a landlord. One is in it for the short term, looking ahead to the exit. The other is in it longer term and expects the property to pay its way.  Two totally different things.

But as Anderson points out, just like after the Dot Com bust of the early part of this century, the current downturn forces us all to reflect once again on the realities of business. Not only is “free” unsustainable as a standalone business model for entrepreneurs, but I would add that free is also risky for end users.

Is there a role for “free”? Certainly — as a marketing strategy that supports your business model:

• Use free as a limited time promotion.
• Use free for an entry level product to develop demand for premium products with a price tag.
• Use free to sell something else with a price tag (the old “give away the razor to get them to buy razor blades” strategy).
• Use free as a strategy to get at startups and young people, to encourage them to “grow into” a habit of customer loyalty.
• Use free as a strategy to sell high-margin add-on services.

But whatever you do, don’t expect “free” to be the end goal for a software application.  That’s crazy.

More at Paid Content and Techmeme.

Cloud Hosting’s Identity Crisis

January 29, 2009 at 11:07 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

Two thirds of small businesses are unaware of cloud hosting, says a recent Rackspace survey (press release here). 

Actually — I’m surprised that even one third of small businesses know what cloud hosting is.  When I saw the press release, I had to stop and think about it myself.  It’s one of those terms that is hard to get your arms around.

Cloud computing as a general category is easier to understand.  For instance, I can quickly grasp that getting access to software on a “rental” basis via the Web is cloud computing. 

But cloud hosting seems redundant.  I could envision any outsourced hosting arrangement where your website is on a shared server, as cloud hosting.  I am not sure of the difference between a shared hosting arrnagement and cloud computing — after all, aren’t they both “in the cloud?”

Web Hosting Unleashed notes the challenge inherent in the terminology:

The latest trend-maker in the tech industry is cloud computing, a term that is struggling to find a concrete definition. Ask any IT pro to define cloud computing and you’ll get an unrefined answer punctuated by a lot of hemming and hawing. This ambiguity is expected for brand-new computing paradigms, but it makes cloud computing tougher to sell to corporate IT managers. Still, cloud computing — which is similar to grid computing, utility computing and SaaS (software-as-a-service) — is catching on …as a relatively cheap way to access enormous, highly flexible computing resources.

And therein lies a challenge for technology vendors: simplifying and de-jargonizing the message. It’s doubly hard to attract small business customers when your target market has no idea what you’re selling.

You can download the published results from the Rackspace survey here (PDF).

How the Small Business Technology Profile Will Change after this Recession

January 28, 2009 at 4:40 am · Filed under Web 2.0

Will small businesses — and possibly larger ones — get so used to hunting for low cost and free technology options to save money during this recession, that they become unwilling to pay higher prices? I suspect we are deep in the midst of that happening.

The New York Times had an interesting story earlier this week on this very topic, noting:

“Meanwhile, more experimental but lower-cost technologies like netbooks, Internet-based software services (called cloud computing) and virtualization, which lets companies run more software on each physical server, are on the rise.  * * *

“The day of the Rolls-Royce laptop and the high-end computer may not be totally over,” said Charles King, an independent technology industry analyst in Hayward. Calif. “But certainly the audience for that type of product is getting smaller and smaller.”

Companies have also started to examine what they can do without and what they can do differently, and their choices may alter the competitive and lucrative landscape of business computing. “ 

The Times story points out what happened after the Dot Com bust of the early part of this century. Some high-flier tech companies like Sun Microsystems were dragged down as new players like Google ascended, with lower cost or free offerings.

One of the things that also happened post Dot-Com bust is that businesses started getting a taste for technology that was inexpensive or free.

That’s been a trend over the past decade, and I think it just intensifies during times when money is tight.

I could give example after example of technology on a unit-cost basis going down.  But does that spell doom (or lower sales) for technology makers across the board? Not really.  It’s just forcing vendors to change their business models.

But for small businesses that are end users of technology, it’s a bonanza.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Future: Big Corporations Become Distributors for Small Business Apps

January 21, 2009 at 1:20 am · Filed under Information Architecture, Web 2.0

We’ve seen the future for small business developers of software apps — and it’s having the big guys distribute your app on their platform.

What Wal-Mart did for entrepreneurial inventors of new consumer products … what Amazon did for authors of new books …  and what eBay did for antiques dealers and other small etailers — various companies are now doing for developers of software and media applications.

We are seeing large popular products become distribution channels for smaller “satellite” products, through an associated marketplace.  These are places where small developers of products can go and more easily find customers and distribute their apps without the costs of developing market channels on their own.

Perhaps the highest profile apps distribution platform is Apple with its Apps Store.

USAToday has an article about how application developers are using the iPhone as a way to get noticed.  And it’s more than just getting PR or visibility — they’re making money, too.  App developers are clamoring to get in to the App Store because they get results.  For instance, Pandora, the online radio service, is reported to get 40% of its new subscribers from the iPhone.  And it’s all because Apple makes it easy with its Apps Store — easy for both end users and developers.

But iPhone apps are just a start.

RIM, makers of the ubiquitous BlackBerry, recently announced that it is accepting developer applications for its new Application Storefront, which will allow BlackBerry users to download software applications to their BlackBerry devices.

Google has a similar opportunity in the works for its Android Market, a marketplace of apps for its new Android phone.

And it doesn’t stop with mobile devices.  No — software apps are also being distributed online through centralized venues.  Of course, we’ve long had places like Tucows and Download.com, where if you had a small piece of shareware or a low-priced software app, you could distribute it.

But now ecosystems are developing, with apps designed to work with particular products such as the iPhone.

The Intuit Marketplace is one of the highest profile examples of a marketplace for SaaS software applications.  It’s more than just a marketplace, but is actually a platform that helps developers cost effectively build hosted online applications.  By participating in the Intuit Partner Progam, Intuit tells developers of B2B software they can “Easily build Intuit Workplace Apps and then sell them to our millions of small business customers.”  Intuit goes on to say it’s … “The fastest & easiest way to build your SaaS business - without the hassle of building your own server, database, and billing infrastructure.”

Intuit allows you to use their QuickBase infrastructure to develop the application.  They make it easy to integrate with the flagship Intuit product, QuickBooks.  They host the application for you.  You pay only for the resources you use.  And they’ll even provide a platform at the Intuit Marketplace so you can sell your app to the 4 million small business customers that Intuit has.

Currently in the Intuit Marketplace Workplace Apps collection there appear to be hundreds of applications available.   For more, read the review by Alex Criss of the Partner Platform and the Intuit Marketplace.

Small businesses have seen the future, and it’s about partnering with the big guys to develop, host and distribute your software application as a service.