
FinancialForce on a Tear
When salesforce.com invested in FinancialForce a few years ago, there was keen interest in how this would help the company grow. There’s never been much clarity around those numbers since the parent company of FinancialForce, Unit4, doesn’t break out the individual numbers of operating divisions. That is a bit clearer now since in its last reporting period, […]

Harvest Launches Time Tracking Platform-The Rise of the Real Time Business Application Approach
I spent some time the other day talking with Tom Mornini, founder of Boocx (more on them to come). Suffice it to say Boocx is focused on becoming the accounting platform for web developers – but platform in the true sense of the word – some core pieces of infrastructure that, via API hooks can […]

Xero Rolls Out Some More Network Effects and Faces Some Criticism. Some Lessons on Viral Strategies
Xero rolled out a new update this week which included some interesting and valuable features. The introduction of online invoicing is a bit of a watershed, rather than opening emailed PDF’s, customers whose suppliers use Xero can click on a URL which takes them to an online invoice. SO far so good – saves paper, saves […]

Xero Hits Escape Velocity With 100000 Customers Count
Xero held its annual meeting last week and detailed its current performance. Xero annual meetings are always an interesting event, Xero has an incredibly supportive shareholder base, while most publicly listed company AGMs include a fair dose of critique and questioning, Xero’s events instead ring to the sound of hand-clapping

FreeAgent Acquires 60mo–Plans US Expansion
Big news in the SaaS accounting space this morning as FreeAgent announces that it has acquired US accounting provider 60mo and will be using the company as its vehicle for a US expansion. 60mo is a small SaaS provider that has quietly been going about building a small following for its financial forecasting tool. They’ve […]

Buying Cloud Accounting Software?
Fellow Enterprise Irregular Brian Sommer is doing a webinar this Wednesday on The Top 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Cloud Accounting Systems (But Should!). in cooperation with FinancialForce. Brian will cover a number of buying considerations and trends that are being reflected in new buyer perspectives for financial accounting software. The software market is undergoing […]

Xero Nabs Intuit Exec
I’ve long wondered how Xero will execute upon its North American opportunity – after all North America is the real goal for the company, and also where they face the biggest hurdles to success. I’ve even been roundly criticized for articulating this question I’ve spent some time with Xero’s US president Jamie Sutherland who seems […]

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

Wave Goes Payroll
I’ve written before about Wave Accounting, a vendor that is hoping to turn SMB accounting software on its head by delivering a product at a zero price point and monetizing through the smart utilization of aggregate data. The jury is out as to SMBs appetite for their data being used, and whether it is viable […]

Twinfield show their vision of the future of accounting
Two weeks ago I was part of a modest International stream as part of Twinfield‘s very impressive National Accountancy Day in The Netherlands. They have been running this Annual event for 6 years and it has grown from 30 attendees back in 2005 to 500 last year, and well over 600 attendees this time, along […]

Twinfield change partners for a new dance
I was delighted to hear, early yesterday, that cloud accounting software provider Twinfield was acquired by Wolters Kluwer. I have to disclose that my company, D2C, have been Twinfield’s UK partner since 2005 and so we have a vested interest in the success of the platform and some great customers and partnerships that have come […]

SaaS And Cloud Computing Taking Off With Financials And Accounting Professionals
Proformative, an online community for corporate, finance, accounting, treasury and related professionals, recently conducted an online survey of their members and found that these professionals are more open to SaaS and Cloud Computing than ever before. We have to keep in mind that this survey and report was sponsored by Netsuite and we should take […]

Sage in the Cloud, but is it too little too late?
Last week Sage, the UK’s biggest accountancy software supplier, finally released their first real online accounting solution. It looks like a proper SaaS or Cloud offering, unlike the hosted Online 50 product sold through a few resellers from 6 years ago, or their previous failed attempt of SageLive in 2009. I would argue that because […]

Zoho Rounds Out Small Business Suite with Accounting App–Zoho Books
This morning Zoho, known for SMB focused SaaS offerings in the areas of productivity, collaboration, business processes launched an Accounting app: Zoho Books. I typically don’t do detailed product reviews, when I see the first good ones, will link to them – just a few points here and then let’s discuss how it rounds out […]

Redux: Will Google Enter the Business Applications Market?
If you think I am here to spill the beans, you’re wrong. On a purely speculative level, if there is some news to come, and if there is an embargo related to it, then here @ CloudAve we respect that. And it’s all a big IF. So no, I am simply dusting off an old […]