Ben Kepes
Principal of Diversity Analysis, Ben is an analyst, entrepreneur, commentator and business advisor. Areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.
On Google Drive, and Core Focus, and Dropbox
News today (admittedly for the umpteenth time in the last few years) that Google looks likely to finally roll out its cloud storage product, G Drive. According to the WSJ; Drive allows people to store photos, documents and videos on Google’s servers so that they could be accessible from any
There’s a World Outside the US–Podio Delivers
Living on the other side of the world from the bay area, it’s sometimes little frustrating just how inward looking Silicon Valley can be. Sometimes it feels like some technology vendors discount the 5 billion or so people who don’t live in that tiny West Coast sliver. Apart from being an arrogant attitude it’s also [...]
Xero Raises Another Round and Acquires WorkFlowMax
Exciting news today from Xero ahead of their user conference tomorrow that spans two important announcements. I’ll cover them individually. $20M Raised from Existing Shareholders Existing shareholders have reinvested to the aggregate tune of $20M. Sam Morgan, Sam Knowles, Craig Winkler and Peter Thiel’s fund Valar Ventures have all taken
Assistly rebrands as Desk.com. Quick Analysis
It was only a few months that salesforce acquired Assistly (more here) but already we see the product relaunching under its new corporate overlords. Rebranded desk.com, the offering has been rebuilt from the ground up including an all new UI, a new HTML5 mobile app and a range of new
On Privacy, and Software Vendor’s Access to Customer Data
A mini firestorm broke out recently when 37Signals posted about their 2011 growth statistics. As part of the post, 37Signals told the world that the 100 millionth file to be uploaded to their software was the picture of a cat. Naturally those who subscribe to conspiracy theories got all fired
MinuteDock Launches on Intuit’s Partner Platform
Exciting times today for the team from MinuteDock (more on them here) the neat little time trapping application from my own hometown, Wellington, New Zealand. Formerly a product that was primarily intended for users of the Xero accounting product, MinuteDock is broadening its approach and is now tightly integrated with
FreeAgent Eases Life for Freelancers and their Expenses Conundrum
Like many freelancers, I incur significant expenses in the course of my contracting work and have to on-charge these expenses to clients. Ideally I’d tick a box in my accounting application and that would allow that cost to flow through to a client invoice without me having to enter it in two places. One of [...]
Huddle Fights to Gain Viral Uptake
In a world where new entrants are trying to break the near-hegemony that Microsoft SharePoint has in enterprise content management, the new generation of vendors is painfully aware that they are in a death race to build momentum. Revenue comes secondary to increasing the viral spread of their products
On TOSCA and Cloud Standards. MyPOV
Recently OASIS standards body started work on the proposed Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (or TOSCA) for short, standards specification. The standard aims to deliver on the long-heralded, but much disputed concept of cloud bursting – the ability to move workloads between public and private infrastructure in a transparent way. I posted about [...]
Is agility and focus worth a price premium – on converged infrastructure costing more…
Krish wrote a post covering a report which showed that the costs involved in utilizing converged infrastructure (ie a consistent approach towards hardware and software that sees everything in a data center fit together like lego) runs to some 15% more expensive than when using a more “Do It Yourself” approach. The topic of [...]
Intuit Pushing Intacct for QuickBooks Graduates
Now this is an interesting piece of scuttlebutt that I was alerted to via a private message. It seems that Intuit have quietly begun pushing QuickBooks users who have “outgrown” their own solutions on to Intacct. This is particularly interesting given the fact that Intuit, a venerable provider with a
ActiveState Stackato Now Supports Private PaaS on HP Cloud Services
With the multitude of PaaS vendors that now exist, most providing an all-things-to-all-people polyglot solution that is (in my view at least) largely undifferentiated from their competitors, there is an increasing focus on vendors making partnerships that allows them to build both mindshare and market penetration. The latest is ActiveState who has announced that their [...]
The Google Apps Marketplace–Chances of Survival
Over on his blog, VC Brad Feld posted about the experience of three of his portfolio companies being part of the Google Apps Marketplace – Spanning, Yesware and Attachments are all built on top of Google Apps and Feld is particularly positive about their experience; While Google has been building
CollabNet Shows the Future of PaaS
I’ve been very bullish over the past couple of years about the role PaaS will play in a cloudy world. I see it as the future for cloud services. I’ve also commented about the increasing homogeneity of PaaS offerigns as they all start chasing each other to add new languages and frameworks – from the [...]
The Path to the Cloud is Paved…. With Jagged Rocks…
It’s always interesting to watch companies looking to move from their “traditional” approach of software delivery to living in the cloud. One company I’ve had a first hand glimpse of making that shift is MYOB (see disclosure). In its home market of Australia and New Zealand, MYOB is facing a small, but growing, and increasingly [...]
