Intuit Launches the IPP Version 2

This morning Intuit will lift the wraps on the latest version of the Intuit Partner Platform. I took a briefing from Alex Chriss, Business leader of the IPP a few days ago (disclosure – I’m travelling to Boston for Enterprise 2.0 in a few weeks and will be doing some work with Intuit around the IPP). Intuit is one of the big boys in SMB software – the 4 million customers for their QuickBooks product alone employ over 25 million staff. Under new CEO Brad Smith, Intit are recgnising the need to shift users to connected services.

After the briefing I have to say that it looks to me like IPP is finally offering to fulfil the promise of the end-to-end integrated small business software platform that I’ve been evangelising for a few years now – my catch cry of late has been that application integration should only be seen as the very first step in building a SaaS ecosystem. Much more important is the aggregation of applications. This may be data aggregation, UI aggregation, sign-on integration or billing integration – and ideally users and vendors would determine what parts of the integration they bought into.

Similarly I envisaged a place where this integration could occur irrespective of what technology stack a partner uses – from the end user perspective it should not make any different if an app is built on a Microsoft stack or a Google one for example – integration should be possible regardless.

IPP v2 fulfils much of this promise – it allows applications, regardless of their base architecture, to integrate into the platform and leverage what the platform has to offer, namely;

User interface
Billing
Single sign-on
Data integration

Intuit is calling this offering “federated applications” and it’s pretty compelling. Federated applications are delivered to customers through the Intuit Workplace, a place to find, try, buy and use various apps. Intuit ensures that platform participants follow a base set of guidelines and that the applications work together seamlessly.

Launching the app Chriss stated that;

Small businesses simply want the best products available that solve their problems, save them time and money and help them grow their business – and they want those products to work together

Which is a theme I’ve been harping on about for a long time now. below is the diagram Intuit uses to show how the marketplace will work.

How Federating an Application Works

According to Intuit, with Federated Applications, Web applications built with any programming language, database or cloud computing resource can be easily published to the IPP and used by the platform customers. The platform is open to everyone, including the 25 million or so existing Quickbooks users but Chriss envisages a future where IPP customers may not use any Intuit applications other than the platform itself. In other words there is no reason that applications which compete with Quickbooks directly wouldn’t appear on the platform.

Existing applications need to be re-configured rather than re-written, and need to meet with the four integration points:

Data: Federated Applications that want to integrate with IPP data must program against APIs provided by Intuit to enable data synchronization. This is the aggregation I’ve been dreaming about and should produce the seamless data interchange I’ve been hoping for
Login: A Federated Identity Web API allows users to use their Intuit Workplace login to access the Federated Applications within Intuit Workplace ie single sign-on to all your SaaS apps
User management and permissions: Intuit provides developers with a Web API so that their application can handle processes such as inviting additional users to their application – this is trickier than it sounds as it needs to allow for complex permissions across multiple applications and businesses.
Navigation: Developers with existing SaaS applications may have to make minor User Interface adjustments, such as removing sign-in/sign-out links within their solutions. The Intuit Workplace provides this in its toolbar to provide users a seamless experience between applications – one use-case that struck me was of an individual with multiple businesses using different SaaS apps – Chriss advised me that a UI update in the next month or so will provide for that situation.

Intuit monetises the IPP via a revenue share of between 14% and 20% depending on volume. End customers can have all their applications billed through one platform thus doing away with the tedium of separate transactions for every single app.

Workplace will also provide for the qualitative differentiation between applications. users will be able to review and rate applications from within the platform thereby giving their peers a qualified portal to different software offerings.

Most important for me is the usability of the offering – below is a screenshot of ExpenseWare running within the Workplace – you’ll notice the header bar which lets you swap between applications on the fly, sign out and also change user settings – nice and simple To borrow a metaphor from elsewhere a platform can be thought of as successful when its users forget they’re on a platform. Intuit Workplace feels much more like a single application environment than individual apps.

The Workplace will be launching with five federated applications which will join the 15 applications native to the platform, the newcomers are;

VerticalResponse e-mail marketing, online survey and direct mail solutions. Pricing for VerticalResponse for Intuit Workplace starts at $10 per month or on a pay-as-you-go model.
Dimdim, Web conferencing, enables small businesses to conduct live meetings, demos and webinars. Anyone can host unlimited Dimdim meetings with up to 50 people for only $25 per month.
Rypple feedback monitoring for 360 degree appraisal of a team. Rypple is free for up to 20 users.
Setster online appointments using an application widget. Pricing for Setster starts at $9.95 per month for one user.
ExpenseWare automated travel and entertainment expense reporting for small businesses. Pricing for ExpenseWare is $9.99 per user per month for up to 1,000 users.

When salesforce.com launched force.com it was heralded as a new paradigm and, to a certain extent, that has somewhat been borne out with businesses running all their applications on, or through, force. IPP is in my view potentially bigger given that it allows applications onto the platform regardless of technology stack. Of course there are those who will have grave concerns about the ability of Intuit to “play nicely” – success in my mind would be users utilising lots of applications without necessarily using an Intuit product or the inclusion of another online accounting application into the platform – I’ll be watching for those developments with interest.

Update - Related posts:

@ben: I'm staggered that you're buying into this 'platform' lock-in so readily. Of course it is any app because those apps have to programmatically work with IPP's API's. That's not a done deal for any application. The long term vision may well be no Intuit apps but if you look at what they're offering now it wouldn't make any sense for an add-on developer to do anything other than dev against QB etc. As to the assertion it shouldn't matter whether it is a Google/M$ stack I don't understand what you mean. There isn't a Google 'stack' per se. I see they're talking about Adobe Flex but have they said anything about Ruby apps where there is a huge amount of investment? It says it allows apps in regardless of tech stack but making that work is a world apart from saying it. The biggest problem though lies in what I am currently seeing in the pricing model. At the rate they're going, I might as well invest straight into Force.com or AppExchange because costs are going to mount very rapidly. At least with SFDC I have a mature model with hundreds of applications to choose from. And then what about market specific needs. Intuit is very much US focused so how will they carry this idea outside the US? One to watch, but with care methinks.

@Dennis - thanks for your comment. The reason that IPP appeals is that it doesn't create lock in the way a force.com does. It's an integration model rather than one that relies on apps appearing within the platform. A such it's a continuation of things such as FreshBooks Service as a Network notion. My understanding is that applications can be part of the platform regardless of what they're written in - I'd need to confirm it but I'd assume this would include Ruby. The fact that there are multiple points of integration would suggest that making it work would be easier than on (for example) a force.com type PaaS offering. I've spoken to vendors who indicate that the revenue share is similar to that expected with other channel partnerships - this one however has the attractiveness of playing to a reasonably qualified audience. As for market specific needs, the important thing here is that it's not a QuickBooks play - as such it should be less regionally-centric than other apps.

@ben: you have to be really careful on this stuff because in truth all the current iterations of PaaS are at best half way between product and service. You say no lock-in but I don't see anything about working with other services etc and fundamentally I'm not sure I see much difference between this and AppExchange/Force.com - you're still working within the context of a model that Intuit specifies. In Force.com etc, add-ons become another tab in the main app. Here it seems I have to build against...IPP which is proprietary to Intuit. I'd be far more impressed if it went the other way but that isn't happening. Multiple points of integration make things MORE difficult not less. There is a mathematical formula that expresses it. With the Force.com you have a single point of integration -much simpler though still a lock-in. You say it is not a QB play but that's the only core app in the marketplace so how is not going to end up a QB play? Otherwise there's very little incentive to play unless you think there is some sort of advantage in effectively using IPP as a reseller channel. Their own blurbs say: "Rapidly build and deploy rich Software as a Service (SaaS) apps capable of seamless integration with QuickBooks data." But let's put all of that aside for one moment and assume I am completely wrong. All past attempts at this have failed - the list is starting to get fairly long. Anything to do with money doesn't travel well unless it is incredibly simple. Intuit doesn't have a track record of stepping far outside its territory. There's history here. Anyhoo - the proof will be in the eating and for that we'll all have to wait and see.

@Dennis, thanks for the healthy skepticism :-) you asked about which stacks IPP supports for Federated Apps into IPP: "It says it allows apps in regardless of tech stack but making that work is a world apart from saying it" I can confrim that one of the apps is built on Java. Another is built enirely on .NET. Another is a mix of RoR and LAMP. Another built of Flex (on their own hosting environment - not IPP). If an app was running on EC2, that would work too. As an app built on Google's AppEngine. It doen't matter - the integration points are just that and pretty lightweight (one of the partners was able to turnaround the work with 1 developer in less than two weeks, including time for the technical review of the app). We made a deliberate decision to make IPP agnostic to the technology that developers want to use. Yes, we have a "native" stack also, but the options we are providing developers now means there is no technology lock-in to speak of. Also - just to make clear: apps not have to integrate with QuickBooks data - this is optional and up to the developer. But, as in the case of VerticalResponse, the fact that it does means that the relevance of their app to those QuickBooks customers increases hugely. thanks, Alex Barnett, Group Manager, Dev Relations, Intuit.

Interesting debate about lock-in. Frankly, I tend to agree with Ben, this is an integration framework, not an infrastructure play. There is no technology lock-in, but there is definately channel lock-in. Seems to me that the decision for the app developer comes down to whether or not they want to leverage Intuit as a channel; a tech facilitated channel. And if this is a channel play, then I believe the app. developer should expect to give up billing, login and user management/permissions control. If Intuit's channel is not important to you, don't develop to the framework and build your own channel.

Ben, We quickly realized building the product was half the battle, the other half is building the billing/collection system (the irony of billFLO building a billing system isnt lost on me!) Can you speak in more detail about the billing component of IPP? If the Intuit billing/collection system can be leveraged, this could certainly accelerate time to market for startups. Ian

@alex - thanks for the answers and I also tuned into the show with Phil today. As you know I've raised a number of other questions on my own blog (don't these things have a habit of growing?) Would be good to get your feedback there as well as get a session with you at some stage to walk through the implications.

Hi all - thanks for the feedback @Dennis - I see IPP as being completely different from force in that the same saas product (let's take vertical response as an example) can run standalone or on IPP - it's entirely the same thing. To run on force however it needs to be re-architected to work on that platform and sits there irrevocably - that's lock in. @Dennis - I like the multiple points of integration because it means a vendor can choose which parts of the IPP offering they use - maybe just billing, or maybe just data integration - it's a veritable buffet of options. @Dennis - you say previous attempts at this have failed yet Coda2go is surely a success story for joining in with partnerplays? Personally I am looking forward to another SaaS accounting app going live on IPP to give us all a hgiher degree of confidence @Derek - agreed - this is a channel rather than a technology play. Personally I believe most vendors will be happy to be locked into a platform that has such a large addressable market - especially when they consider that the lock in doesn't stop them dealing with other channels (their own, other PaaS, other partners etc) @Ian - I believe the billing component can be leveraged by other vendors (I'm pretty much sure of it) I'll ask Intuit to comment in more detail

Ian, I thought your comment about spending half your time on building a billing system so you can sell your SaaS app was interesting, as this is just one of the problems we solve for SaaS providers. In your case (where you have the SaaS app built, deployed, etc), you can use our Federated Apps model to package your SaaS app and sell it to Intuit Workplace customers. Currently, we provide you with the ability to provide a Free Trial version of your app (up to 30 days) and a paid for version (by defining the price of subscribing to the app via a web UI we provide to you). Intuit collects the money from the subscribers of your app and then pay you monthly the subscription revenue for all your subscribers (minus the rev share % we charge you). Hope this helps! Alex. Alex Barnett, Group Manager, Dev Relations, Intuit.

@ben - sorry to say but you've clearly not been on the sharp end of integration issues. Good luck selling that story. You miss my point completely on this but then I guess you've not seen how others have fared. Sorry to sound rude but it is clear you have little clue about the practical realities of getting this stuff done. By all means bang the end user drum but without answers to these fundamental questions then who exactly is going to come to the party?

@Dennis - actually I'm an end user of a number of integration situations and hence totally understand why the IPP play is difficult but sensible. I'm not sure if you realise but I've been involved with a large number of SaaS integrations and see IPP as making life easier in a number of situations. There are 5 apps that are up and working and I for one am looking forward to seeing more. Luckily I'm not selling a story, rather espousing a strong opinion, loosely held...

Intuit Launches the IPP Version 2

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