The next SaaS- Something as a Service

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.

Leaders Go Out

Here is one more reason why startups innovate so much and create new categories time and again where the large enterprise guys do more of the same thing: Entrepreneurs spend most of their time looking outward, rather than looking and focusing on internal affairs.

“I can’t afford it”- The SMB version

Seth Godin wrote a wonderful post about this infamous phrase: “I can’t afford it.” As always, I will try to add the SMB point of view on this notion: If you set your heart on selling to small and medium businesses, be ready to hear this phrase. A lot. It is not intentional: SMB owners or managers run on a smaller budget but often don’t have the support system of a large company to help them in making the right decision. As a result, they will give you the easiest answer: NO. One cannot go wrong by not spending… Here are some tactics (and mistakes) used by companies that are selling to SMBs:

Seven Reasons Why SaaS Would Be a Great Success

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).

Apple Company Ethics

Seth Godin is writing about Apple’s grand move of firing 800 retail employees for double-dipping into their iPhone benefits. Seth thinks it is marketing and he is probably right. Apple sent a clear message of high ethics to other employees and to the market.

The bothersome question is the fact that Apple actually had to fire 800! employees to make this point. I could only think of two reasons for this massive misbehavior: The rules were not clear for Apple employees or that there is a low ethics atmosphere in Apple stores.

SMB—The Passion Business

Here is another important insight that will help vendors and entrepreneurs to better understand SMBs: most of them are passion driven. Now, it is not the same type of passion that drives C-level execs in the top floors of Fortune 500 companies. It is passion for what they do, the hobby that turned into a business. Understanding how SMBs are driven and what they do best will help you to better serve them. I know I am generalizing, but you will find it true in many cases, especially in smaller SMBs (owner operator).

Seven reasons why SaaS is not main street in SMB

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.

What Windows Vista Failed To Do

I am no expert in operating systems and I would not attempt to review Windows Vista. If you are really interested in Vista, there is a whole blog dedicated to it. There is really only one reason why I regret using it (not that I had any choice, it came with my new laptop…): it is slow.

You see, products have jobs to do and each product has a “job zero”

SMB Segmentation

Due to popular demand, I created one PDF document that summarize both posts (SMB- Redefined and the Subsidiary) about the different type of SMB companies. Enjoy.

SMB Segmentation White Paper

SAP and Business Objects Acquisition—A Succession Scenario

I assume you’ve heard everything about the SAP and Business Objects Acquisition. After all, there are 182,000 search results in Google for this query alone… If you followed the news you also know that John Schwarz, Business Objects CEO, will join SAP’s executive board as its seventh member (SAP is a German company and the executive board acts as the company’s management team) and will get to manage both the former BO business and SAP’s fast-growing Business User division, that is led by Doug Merritt, SAP Labs top brass. Lots of power and influence from day one.

 

Major acquisitions like this one seldom have only one motive, and they are much more a form of art than science. One can assume that SAP liked the technology and products, was intrigued by the large installed base and the synergies with SAP’s Business User strategy. There are also many other hidden motives— I would like to speculate* about one of them—the succession motive.