It was only a matter of time before one of the fledgling accounting SaaS vendors sold their business either in part or in full. Only last week I was sitting down with someone in San Francisco discussing what Microsoft’s canning of Money means for online accounting – we both agreed that the next couple of years will see a consolidation in the marketplace – both through some smaller vendors dropping off but also through acquisition.
Well we didn’t have long to wait – IAC-EZ (CloudAve review here) have announced that they’ve been acquired by Making SaaS Easy Corporation which is headed by Scott Myers. IAC-EZ is their first SaaS product and Myers obviously saw some potential in what they were doing. Myers points to the “powerful offering, dedicated customer base and unparalleled leadership that brought the application to the market quickly and efficiently” as being reasons for his acquisition.
Interestingly enough IAC-EZ founder Heather Villa will continue to run the IAC-EZ project and will also develop new offerings that will be made available through Making SaaS Easy Corporation (which is the name of the holding corporation – the product remains IAC-EZ as previously).
This isn’t the first offer that IAC has had, but arguably it would appear to be one that enables the product to retain its focus, while using the leverage of a capital influx to develop faster. Villa told me that she “strategically chose the alliance with Making SaaS Easy Corporation to ensure the active participation of the original IAC-EZ team. We remain dedicated to growing and perfecting this top quality software and offering an easy to use service with unparalleled support for our users.”
The partnership will allow IAC-EZ to ramp up both product and channel developments specifically they’re looking to work on;
- Better infrastructure
- Schema changes to allow for deeper integrations with third party applications
- A beefed up quality assurance component
- Channel partnerships through an on-the-ground presence in Canada, the UK and Australasia
- Regionalization of the application
It’s hugely difficult for a small software house to gain traction, especially in such a traditional area as accounting. Expect to see deals like this one more in the future in order to give players more clout in the race to the top.
So do you see the same situation arising for our own Xero accounting software, and do you see this as a good thing?
@Jollyswagman – Yes I can very much imagine an acquisition sometime in the future. In terms of whether it is a good thing it depends with what respect you’re asking that question… good for the country? good for the app? good for the founders? good for the shareholders?
There’s a big hole in the marketplace for serious SaaS support for Home and Personal financial management; i.e. accounting – but of course the users shouldn’t know that!
The Big Boys probably see this as below their station so there’s an opportunity out there just awaiting exploitation. This is the time for some of those flegling SaaS vendors to get in on the act as soon as possible, then go swim out in the oceans of the world and watch out for the sharks.
And there’s a new accounting model just crying out for such attention – Domestic Well-Being Accounting (DWBA).