SaaS - Services as a Service .. now wait are you trying to confuse us here

Saw this interesting post When SaaS Means 'Services as a Service' posted on Intelligent Enterprise by David Lunthicum. At first glance this read like an attempt at confusion. However now that I looked at what StrikeIron does it actually makes sense. So in yesterdays world if you wanted to embed logic about currency conversion or validating a US postal address or symbol of a company listed on Nasdaq you would either try coding it yourself by maintaining some seed data or you try finding a public web service that meets the requirement.

What companies like StrikeIron are doing is they've become aggregators of services from partners like D&B, MapQuest etc and offer them through their own catalog. Now one might question the value of that and say why wouldnt I go directly to D&B and get access to their services and data. Well the spectrum is wide and there could be instances where the StrikeIron model works better. Lets say you're a small startup or a SMB kind of a company that needs access to some disparate services, would you invest in people and contracts and partnerships to reach out to each of these vendors get info on their offerrings and then maintain relationships. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you might go to StrikeIron and pick off of their catalog or services.

So SaaS with "Services as a Service" makes some sense. Now nearly half of Salesforce's traffic these days comes through web services, does that mean they are now transforming into a "Services as a Service" company?

By the way here's what StrikeIron says it does in a nutshell.

* CONNECT

* • Find Data Services
* • Browse Solutions
* • Cleanse & Enhance Data

* CREATE

* • Build Mashups in Excel
* • Create Business Solutions
* • Integrate into Salesforce.com

* COLLABORATE

* • New! Developer Community
* • Download Code and Clients
* • Access Free Data

Freeeconomics ... It changes everything

Recently ran into this article "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"by Chris Anderson at Wired Magazine.

Now while on the surface I dont buy what this article is trying to say, cause someone always has to pay and there is no free meal. There is a growing perception these days on the web that onlines services should essentially be free and if there is a cost associated to a service your best bet to fame is by offerring a free version of that same service.

I think whats going on today on the web is a great deflection economy where the consumer of the service is being funded by the vendor based on the revenue it might be getting from another consumer or advertiser. So the consumer is left with the perception that what they are consuming is essentially "Free". Now wasnt that going on already with ad based community magazines that were available for free. I guess todays online service providers have taken that model and optimized it to their benefit.

Here's the Taxanomy of free that Chris has listed.

Freemium
What's free: Web software and services, some content. Free to whom: users of the basic version.
Advertising
What's free: content, services, software, and more. Free to whom: everyone.
Cross-subsidies
What's free: any product that entices you to pay for something else. Free
to whom: everyone willing to pay eventually, one way or another.
Zero marginal cost
What's free: things that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to
anyone. Free to whom: everyone.
Labor exchange
What's free: Web sites and services. Free to whom: all users, since the act
of using these sites and services actually creates something of value.
Gift economy
What's free: the whole enchilada, be it open source software or user-generated content. Free to whom: everyone.

Click "here for the complete article.

Platforms for building future CRM Apps or any Apps for that matter

Had a very interesting interaction last week with some bright folks at a .com company. Anyways felt like blogging after a long time cause had something really interesting to share based on some stuff I've been working on. Also have lazily ignored blogging over the last few weeks :-(

Anways to get on with it. Over the last few weeks I've been trying to play around with what might very well be platforms delivered through the cloud for building the next generation CRM Apps and maybe even "any" Apps in general. So here's the working list and as I go through them will have detailed posts on each as well.

As I go through the list, 3 strong trends that are emerging for me are;

- Delivery as a service
- Rich internet applications
- User focused application development

Here's the list I've been looking at and will post soon on each of these individually as well.

Force.com
Coghead
OpenLaszlo
Iceberg
ZohoCreator
Trackvia
WuFoo
LongJump
SugarCRM

Whether you're an individual, organization (large or small) or ISV looking for a new application or with existing applications, there is no way you can go decide to create or buy your own application today without looking at one of these platforms.

2008: A Year for Enterprise 2.0 or is it

Read this really interesting post titled "2008: A Year for Real Choices" by M.R. Rangaswami on SandHill.com. The post has some great insights for folks trying to gaze through the glass and see what lies ahead.

However the reason I wanted to bring it up here is the prediction for Enterprise 2.0. It couldnt have been summarized better. This year will either establish "2.0" as more than just a buzz word or announce its demise as we wrap up '08.

6. Enterprise 2.0 Will Take Shape – or Not The social network applications have been working on “consumerizing” the enterprise for the last couple years. 2008 will be the year in which we begin to see hard proof of how these technologies can revolutionize the enterprise – or we won’t. Enterprise 2.0 vendors must emerge from the sidelines and deliver strong proof that this trend is more than a buzzword or a fad in order to stay on CIOs’ radar.

Lets close the 2007 deal, SR, campaign, order ... and welcome the business of 2008

As they say, another good year behind us. Had to really resist the temptation of blogging about '08 predictions or '07 observations as my final post for the year.

Think '07 was a great year for CRM and one look at products from vendors like Oracle and SAP indicate that the next (2.0) generation is very much here and mainstream. So I would say buckle up as we are on for a ride in 2008.

Happy New Year everyone.

Top 20 Things Sales and Marketing folks should know

Ran into a couple of great compilations by Rohit Bhargava on his Influential Marketing Blog. Through these two posts what he has done is classified terminology that todays marketing folks should avoid using going forward or focus on in 2008. Now while I agree with most of what he describes in his posts, I have a slightly different take on these.

I would say that what he has provided are the Top 20 things that sales and marketing folks should be aware of in somewhat descending order. But make sure you familiarize yourself with these as it'll be increasingly difficult to market in 2008 without understanding what inbound links, engagement or impressions means in todays world.

The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Metrics To Track in 2008

1. Inbound Links (from influential sources)
2. Direct URL Access
3. RSS Subscribers
4. Email Link Referrals
5. Time Spent (engagement)
6. Organic Keyword Referrals
7. Email Longevity and Multiple Opens
8. Abandonment
9. Clickstream
10. Microsharing

The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007

1. Impressions
2. Technorati Authority
3. Comments
4. Trackbacks
5. Time Spent (searching)
6. Keyword Conversion Rate
7. Number of Pages
8. Email Open Rate
9. Popover Click Rate
10. Page Views

Biggest Business Challenges for 2008 - HBR

Harvard Business is building a crystal ball around responses from readers on the Biggest Management Challenges in 2008. Among some of the early responses;

Social Networking. “Companies must learn to effectively utilize social
networking tools both inside and outside the companies to keep up with what the
younger workers grew up with — fast and furious communication tools like
texting, facebook, My Space, You Tube, etc. that spread the word now. Not in the
next quarter, next month, next week or even next day, but NOW.”

Absolutely agree !! and thats where customers should be going with their CRM 2.0 initiatives as well.