The Next Wave of SMB SaaS: True Solutions. Priced as Such.
If you look at the SaaS companies that have IPO’d to date, you’ll see one common theme: almost all sell to Large Enterprises, either almost entirely (Veeva, Workday), mainly (Salesforce, Cornerstone), or in large part (Box, coming). It just makes sense. The reason isn’t just because Large Enterprises have more money. In fact, as a […]
StitchLabs–Solving SMBs Inventory Woes
Many readers know that outside of technology, I own a business that manufactures apparel and other products and sells them both online and through retail outlets. Having been involved in that business for 17 or so years, I’ve had first-hand experience of just how difficult it is to run a tightly integrated operation with e-commerce, […]
Two SaaS Metrics That Actually Don’t Matter That Much: Churn and Sales Cycles
Ok, I know the title sounds a bit controversial, but bear with me, it’s not. Metrics are critical in SaaS, and you need to track them fastidiously. But it’s also important to focus on the right metrics, at the right stage, and not obsess about the less important ones at the wrong times. And I’m […]
Google+ Hangouts On Air and SMBs
Yesterday Google unwrapped the Google+ Hangouts on Air to general public with relatively little fanfare. This is part of Google’s social strategy but the product has the potential to disrupt many startups in the space, especially the ones targeting consumers and SMBs. Google could flex their Youtube muscle to literally shove them away. Google+ hangouts […]
Parallels Bets Their Cloud Future On SMBs
As pundits in the Silicon Valley bubble (including the ones whose ideas are shaped by what is happening in the valley) focus more on the AWS, OpenStack and VMwares of the world, there is a company, mostly operating under the radar of these Valley pundits (which includes me), which is slowly but steadily gaining the […]
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 […]
Salesforce Acquires Assistly… Anyone Else See a Disconnect?
News that salesforce has acquired service desk vendor Assistly in a move that many of us had an inkling about well before DreamForce – it seems that dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s of he deal saw it closing after the event. Assistly is a young company that is squarely positioned to compete with […]
Salesforce for Quickbooks for Salesforce for Quickbooks….
Owning and running a bunch of small businesses, I have a real appreciation for just how important it is for SMBs to have a handle on their customers and deal flow – CRM, a concept foreign to many SMBs only a few years ago has become, with the growing importance of social media, a critical […]
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 […]
A Small Business Perspective on the Value of Salesforce Chatter
For those of you not familiar with Chatter, it’s a relatively new product that Salesforce (CRM vendor) released and it’s basically designed to allow for more efficient communication within your organization. It’s a bit like Facebook but for the enterprise. I want to note that this post isn’t about Salesforce as a whole, but specifically […]
Syncplicity Enhances Their Business Edition To Compete Harder In The Crowded Marketplace
Syncplicity (see previous CloudAve coverage), the cloud based file storage and management company, yesterday announced the release of additional features for their Business Edition. This will help them compete harder with services like Sugarsync, Box.Net, etc. in the business space. With this release, Syncplicity makes it clear that they want to target the corporate accounts. […]
NetSuite Fights Hairball Epidemic with New Release and Edgy Marketing Campaign
NetSuite’s marketing team has been known for their edginess, starting from pranks like the SAP for the Rest of Us Party during SAP’s annual conference to staging a shootout at the anti-SAP Conference or releasing edgy videos a’la Mac vs. Windows. Today they are doing it again, by establishing the Hairball Institute for Business: (The […]
Open Source And Cloud Computing: How Bitnami Helps Launch Open Source Apps On EC2 In 2 Minutes
When Amazon announced the release of Amazon Micro Instances, I was excited about how useful it will be for SMBs. Amazon Micro Instances + Open Source software solves one of the problems faced by SMBs. Some pundits outright dismissed the possibility of using Micro Instances for web hosting. Even though I agree that Micro Instances […]
Telcos Could Be The Future Enterprise Software Vendors For Small Businesses
Having worked on enterprise software product and go-to-market strategy for SMB (small and medium businesses), I can tell you that these are the most difficult customers to reach to, especially the S in SMB. It’s an asymmetric non-homogeneous market f…
Open Source And Cloud Computing: Amazon Micro Instances Can Be Boon To SMBs
Earlier today, I wrote about Amazon’s announcement on the availability of the new Micro Instances and their aggressive pricing strategy. The surprising factor for me is their competitive pricing. Their on-demand instance is only 2 cents per hour for Linux and 3 cents per hour for Windows. A 24/7 usage of a Linux Micro Instance […]
