Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: cloud computing

  • Tell me something I didn’t know

    Tell me something I didn’t know

    “Tell me something I didn’t know about my customer;” is what Clint Oram demands of his software.

    “If you think about legacy of Customer Relationship Management tools it’s really been about entering something I already knew about by customer so my manager can keep track of me.”

    Oram sees that changing with Sugar CRM, the open source Customer Relationship Management software company he co-founded in 2004 at a time when the software industry was coming out of the post dot com bust depression.

    “There was a huge backlash by customers to the enterprise software market,” Oram remembers. “There were a lot of hopes and promises made of all this fantastic software that would change the world. The reality was a lot of it didn’t do anything.”

    Foundations for the cloud

    In Oram’s view, that disillusionment formed the basis of today’s cloud based software businesses with the market’s demand that software be delivered as a service, reducing up front commitments to any one product, commercial open source that gave customers a stake in development and annual subscription licensing.

    That last factor – a radical change to the traditional software model that saw small businesses buy boxed programs and larger enterprises negotiate complex agreements with expensive implementation projects – is the biggest change to the modern software industry.

    Oram sees that as challenging those established giants like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft; “in the past it was ‘here’s my software, goodbye and good luck. Maybe we’ll see you next year.”

    “If you look at those names, the competitors we see on a day-to-day basis, several of them are very much challenged in making the shift from perpetual software licensing. It’s been a challenge that I don’t think all of them will work their way through, their business models are too entrenched.”

    “Software companies really have to stay focused on continuous innovation to their customers.”

    Freemium challenges

    From his ten years in business, Oram learned the freemium model is a difficult way to run a business, “we learned that the freemium model is challenging and you gotta really focus on differentiation across your software editions and deliver clear value to each customer segment.”

    While the Freemium business model remains a challenge, Oram sees mobile and the cloud as driving the CRM industry with the sector focusing on delivering more customer insights as software increasingly goes mobile and gets better at predicting behaviour.

    “We’re taking these cloud, mobile based platforms that can be delivered anywhere and anytime,” says Clint “and now work on collecting that data about your customers and telling you what you should do next.”

    “How do you help your customer to get the fullest value out of working with you.”

    Delivering value to customers is a challenge not just for the software industry; in an era where business is far more competitive, it’s a question facing all industries.

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  • Going to the cloud is not for the faint hearted

    Going to the cloud is not for the faint hearted

    “The cloud is not for the faint hearted,” warns Technology One CEO Adrian Di Marco in describing his company’s evolution into a software as service provider.

    “We thought that this was five to ten years away, I’d like to say we got that wrong and this phenomena is happening now.” Di Marco said at the company’s 2014 Evolve conference on the Gold Coast today, “we’ve seen huge uptake in companies going to the cloud.”

    A virtuous circle

    Responding to that demand meant that Technology One had to redesign their software and update it to the meet the very different requirements of cloud services.

    What Di Marco found in moving Technology One’s software onto the cloud was it became easier to identify problems and inefficiencies in his product, creating what he calls a “virtuous circle”.

    It’s not just Di Marco’s customers who’ve been through that process, Technology One itself has gone all cloud internally with the company using services like Google Docs and Salesforce.

    The aim of moving online is to make organisations more flexible with Di Marco citing the newly reformed Noosa Council in Queensland as being able to get up and running in four months by using cloud services.

    Problems with the cloud

    Despite being an enthusiast for cloud computing, Di Marco does sees some problems with the cloud, the first being that the term is overused and ill-defined which results in services being mis-sold.

    A bigger problem in Di Marco’s view is a ‘gold rush’ has developed around the concept with revenue hungry vendors looking at making money

    “IT companies, particularly consultancy firms, have over the last few years seen their revenues decline so to find new sources of growth they are all targeting the cloud.”

    “Everybody wants to become a cloud provider, everyone wants to provide strategic services to do with the cloud.”

    “There’s a lot of people offering very mediocre ideas, concepts and services.”

    The key takeaway for businesses from Di Marco’s presentation was businesses need to be careful about their choices of cloud services providers.

    Di Marco’s other point is that cloud services work best when there aren’t intermediaries such as resellers and integrators involved that reduce efficiencies and add costs.

    “The cloud is a platform for the future of business,” sums up Di Marco. “Businesses that move to the cloud have an enormous strategic advantage, they can move at a pace that normal business can’t. They can move fast and innovate quickly.”

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  • Limitations of the cloud

    Limitations of the cloud

    Today I wrote a review for Business Spectator on the HP Chromebook 11, describing it as a nice computer that fits the market space left by the demise of the netbook.

    For the HP Chromebook 11, its failing lies in the cloud services it relies upon; if you don’t have a reliable internet connection, or you’re on a flight, then you lose access to many of your files.

    This isn’t a problem for office use, most workplaces have reliable internet connections and don’t have to worry about interruptions however when you head out on the road, things change.

    A particular bugbear is using the device while on a plane, in my case I discovered the files were listed in the offline docs folder but were ‘unavailable’ on trying to open them.

    This is irritating early in a three hour flight when you’re trying to get some work done.

    At least with flights Google has done a deal with Gogo internet for inflight access which indicates the company has identified this as a problem, although the arrangement does nothing to help air travellers outside the US.

    For the moment, cloud based services are great if you have reliable broadband internet access but for travellers things will continue to be problematic.

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  • Hitting the eighty percent of needs

    Hitting the eighty percent of needs

    “I don’t use ninety percent of what’s in Microsoft Word” has been the complaint of computer users for years as they struggled through the myriad features of box software products.

    In the days of floppy disks and CDs, software developers tried to deliver as many features as they could; despite the fact that the ordinary user only needed a core set of functions and that most items on the menus went untouched.

    The result was bloated, difficult to use software. The cloud computing model changes this, particularly in business fields like accounting software.

    Last week saw a blitz of releases from cloud accounting services with Xero, Intuit and MYOB all making big announcements.

    MYOB announced a wide ranging product refresh, Intuit their mobile service and Xero its new board directors that point the direction for its US expansion.

    A key part of all the announcement was how the services are all boasting of their partner ecosystems developing add ons that improve users’ functionality.

    Once consequence of having an army of developers plugging into the product means that companies don’t have to ship bloated packages that have dozens of features that are irrelevant to each users’ needs.

    Xero’s Australian CEO,  Chris Ridd, put this well during the week by observing that company aims to “address the basic eighty percent of needs”.

    This is the exact opposite of the box software model of the past where vendors would try to pack more features into their products which gave rise to the term bloatware.

    Microsoft’s Office package was probably the best example of this massive growth in the product size, with the installation files eventually taking up a full 4.3Gb DVD to deliver something that most people were happy with when WordPerfect 2.0 shipped on three floppy disks.

    That change to the software model is a good example of how business practices and methods change as technology evolves; it also illustrates just one of the fundamental changes older software companies are having to deal with as cloud services change their industry.

    We can still have all the features we want in a software package, but we’ll just have to connect – and probably pay for the add ons.

    Today, we’re more likely to be scrambling to find an add-on rather than complaining about features we don’t need.

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  • Passion and LinkedIn – how Connect2field went global

    Passion and LinkedIn – how Connect2field went global

    Passion is the key to building a successful startup business believes Connect2Field‘s Steve Oronstein.

    Running an IT support service is a tough game and it was the lessons Steve learned in running a PC service business during his teens gave him the passion to solve some of the industry’s problems and the idea to launch what’s become part of a global business.

    “My very first business when I was nineteen was an IT support business,” Steve says. “During that business I saw it was an absolute nightmare being able to manage all those field workers, managing job sheets and invoicing customers.

    “I did that for four or five years and then decided I didn’t want to do that all,” remembers Steve. “I started seeing some opportunities to do some work in job management. From the knowledge I had from the problems in the previous business, I could see there was an opportunity for a product.”

    Finding international investors

    Steve quickly realised there was an international market for that business and Connect To Field quickly caught the attention of global investors, “I would constantly receive emails from VCs about investing the business.”

    One day Steve received a LinkedIn connection and the path to being acquired by a larger company started.

    “At the time Fleetmatics came along there were two businesses that were looking to acquire the business. That happened through a LinkedIn connection.”

    “A request one morning from someone from Fleetmatics wanting to connect with me and wanting to talk about a partnership. That happened very quickly and we were acquired.”

    The importance of smart investors

    Steve thinks investors have been a critical part of the business’ growth and not just for the capital they bring in, but also for their expertise.

    “The key thing in the very beginning was to raise investment from people who could also be mentors,” says Steve.

    “I formed a board with five of people with skills in different parts of the business – legal, marketing, sales, technology”

    “When we went through the acquisition space it was invaluable having a board we could bounce ideas off and strategise with.”

    For Steve, his advice to other entrepreneurs is to be find a problem and be passionate about solving it.

    “I was very passionate about being able to provide a solution for my customers and I knew that what we were delivering would add real value to those business.”

    “Finding something that you’re passionate is the number one thing and the rest of it will follow,” says Steve.

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