Monthly Archives: October 2009

I’ve often talked about my personal desire for accounting software to emerge from it’s constrained place within either a desktop app or a SaaS dashboard and to be exposed where, and when, a user wants it to be.

Earlier this year I was very positive about Youcalc, in part because it gives businesses the ability to gain visibility over metrics across multiple systems, all viewable in one place (and for that matter, embeddable in multiple places).

Given my penchant for visibility then, it made me happy to read a week or so ago that Zoho (disclosure – Zoho is the exclusive sponsor of CloudAve, having said that these are my own views) has created a “Gadget” for it’s invoicing product (see CloudAve review here) that is able to be embedded wherever required – within Zoho’s own business dashboard, on iGoogle, within Facebook – in fact any site or page that is either OpenSocial compatible or that allows the embedding of an iframe.

It’s a simple thing but also deceptively powerful. Remember that software is a means to an end for small business – it’s the stuff which helps them (hopefully) do whatever it is they actually do – be it manufacturing, designing, selling whatever. As such the best thing software can do is enable users getting the information they need as and where they need it – quickly and easily thus letting them get on with whatever they actually do.

It’s precisely this flexibility that makes widgets like the Zoho invoice one so valuable. I look forward to the day when all my information: news, RSS, SaaS apps dashboard, internet banking and the like is all able to be displayed where and how I want it – bring it on!

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In two weeks time I’ll be winging my way across the world for the inaugural San Francisco holding of the Enterprise 2.0 conference. As is the norm before large events like this, the emails have started pouring in already asking for times for briefings on products and services to be released during the conference.

In a bid to save frustration on all sides, and as a suggestion to my fellow media attendees, I thought I’d publish here my simple guide to securing time with me (bear in mind there’s hundreds of companies going to be at the event, I’m in SF for just one week and I like to sleep from time to time);

1. Please make it relevant. I’m a Cloud computing and SaaS guy with an interest in business process software and the culture shift needed to ease adoption of “Enterprise 2.0”. Sorry but there’s a bunch of things that simply aren’t in my sphere of interest. Please do some research and read my stuff to get a feel for what will interest and be relevant to me
2. I live in New Zealand, that’s a long way from SF and is in an entirely different timezone – if you want to engage me in a pre event briefing (something I’m not at all against), please take the time to work out when might be a suitable time for me. While I’m a very early riser who partly works in Pacific time, 3am is not a good time to be showing me the latest micro-blogging service for enterprise
3. Find out ways to engage me when you’ll get good attention. I’m a fitness fan and jog most mornings, especially when attending high-stress events like Enterprise 2.0. If someone comes to me and suggests a chat over a leisurely 5 mile run they’re likely to capture my undivided attention – it’s a good opportunity!
4. Work out what pushes my buttons – we all get jaded from lots and lots of calls and a million and one “me too” offerings. Find some way to reach out to me (and Cocktails are definitely NOT my thing) and your chances go up exponentially. I’ve written fairly extensively about a couple of companies lately precisely because their PR people connected with me in all the right ways – this is in no way a “pay for play” situation, merely a way to ensure you’re heard above the hubbub

So there you have it – a simple four step guide to ensuring your investment in media relations pays off. I’d be interested to hear what my fellow media attendees thoughts are….

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I’m a cloud evangelist from what I believe is a totally pragmatic perspective – I believe the cloud in general, and SaaS in particular, deliver significant added value merely by virtue of the fact that they’re connected, connectable and able to leverage aggregate knowledge. I’m not however completely dogmatic. While

I received an auto email response from a friend just the other day. Said friend’s response went thus;

Thankyou for your email. I read my emails daily at 8,11 and 3pm. If your email requires urgent attention please phone me on XXXXXXX

I had a chuckle when I received it. It seemed a typical reaction from the “personal efficiency brigade”. Late last year I was at an event where David Allen, the father of “Getting Things Done”, (and the person that has made a fortune out of it) was presenting. I posted after the sessions saying;

Getting things done. (and a thought – isn’t spending time talking about having to get things done a little oxymoronic – kind of like fighting for peace?)

David Allen, founder of the Getting Things Done methodology spoke and described his process for Getting Things Done. I’ve never been a huge fan of these sorts of programs – I figure you’re either a good time manager or you aren’t. Although that’s easy for me to say – I find multi tasking pretty easy (no matter what my wife says!)

Pretty much I’m from the school of thought that contends that the “4 hour workweek”, “Getting Things Done”, “Sort Your Life in 12 Easy Steps” brigade are little more than snake-oil merchants selling the literary equivalent of the abflexer, eternal youth capsules or, for that matter, the social media consultant; people who sell an unsuspecting customer the hope and dream of a solution to all their problems in a few easy steps.

But getting back to the auto-response. The sender (a fine chap it must be said) is not only a major email user but also a fan of micro blogging who tweets with reckless abandon. I sent out something of a rhetorical question asking whether it wasn’t a non-sense to only check emails three times a day while still routinely using Twitter. Most respondents agreed with my perspective – to avoid checking email but to continue monitoring the fire-hose that is Twitter, seems a little counter-intuitive.

Or not?

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Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background SoftlinePastel is a South African software house owned by Sage PLC. Pastel was

Image via CrunchBase

Earlier this year Atlassian successfully achieved its objective of raising $100000 for Room to Read, an organization that builds schools, libraries in rural communities in Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Zambia. They offered a Five licenses for $5 campaign for their products, with all proceeds going to the charity.

Philanthropy isn’t a one off for Atlassian however, as Zoli mentioned back in April, on so many levels they’re a business with a conscience.

Anyway, this is a big week for Atlassian, on Wednesday they launched the new look Jira, a major upgrade which includes the ability to include OpenSocial gadgets within the application – a move that Atlassian is very excited about, enabling the ability for interoperability to occur between enterprise and consumer systems. Lots more information on Atlassian’s use of OpenSocial can be found here.

Anyway, back to the topic of the post: Philanthropy and how it can be beneficial to an organization. Seeing the success of their April initiative, Atlassian have decided to relaunch their philanthropic deal, and extend it. In what is now a permanent move, organizations can obtain 10 user licenses for $10 for the following Atlassian products; Jira, Confluence, GreenHopper, Bamboo. FishEye and Crowd. Let me reiterate, this is an indefinite promotion, selling fully supported and fully function product with all proceeds going to charity.

I spoke with Jay Simons, VP of Marketing at Atlassian about the move. He reiterated the fact that Atlassian has a social conscience and that they’re more comfortable with a program like this than just embarking on a freemium strategy. He also concurred with my view that it’s far smarter than freemium for a couple of reasons;

• Customers get used to paying for the software and therefore don’t apply the “free equals of no value” stigma to it
• Customers feel good knowing their license feeds are going to a good cause

He explained the move by saying that this program “exposes small business that might not have known about them to Atlassian products, with the expectation that at least some of those customers will continue to use the products as they grow beyond 10 users”.

This strategy seems to work – Jay sent me some data showing the uptake they’d had since launching the program;

$44000 in a little over a day is a pretty good response in anyone’s book.

Here at CloudAve we have a real affinity for Atlassian. Despite them being Australian (I’m from New Zealand and we tend to have a “friendly” rivalry with our trans-Tasman cousins) they’re a inspiration organization and we fully support this initiative. In fact last time Krish and Zoli bought a bunch of Confluence and Jira licenses in order to get Atlassian over the 100k mark. They’ve been planning to give them away, just never got around it… and althought $10 is an incrediable deal, free is free – so if you’d like a free 5-person Confluence or Jira licence, let us know in the comments below, or via the contact form.  

Finally watch Room to Read CEO John Wood’s presentation @  the Atlassian Summit earlier this year:

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I read the other day that the United Nations is currently embarking on a project with the aim of overhauling its ERP systems. This project apparently has a USD300 million budget and according to the tender document;

presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to equip the organization with twenty-first century techniques, tools, training and technology

The UN is currently running around 1400 different information systems that tell a sorry tale of inefficiency including;

• up to 40 full-time employees used to process interoffice and interagency vouchers
• Most duty stations, and many organizational units within duty stations, contain their own stand-alone finance, human resources, supply chain, central support services and information technology areas

So it seems the project is a logical way to drive some efficiency gains while also opening up the United Nations to collaborative and productivity tools that are currently unavailable to them. But I can’t help but think it’s looking at this the wrong way – some functional aspects of the project include;

• $76 million for “2597 work months” of system build and implementation services.
• $14 million for travel, which presumes 1285 trips will be taken by “ERP team members, subject-matter experts and corporate consultants” at an average air ticket cost of $6000. Each trip will also get $202 for “terminal expenses” and $5000 for 20 days worth of per diems, for a total cost of about $11,000 per trip.
• $1.8 million for office furnishings to support 234 workers, including 80 core staff, 66 subject matter experts, eight consultants and 80 system integrators, or about $7700 per person.
• $6.7 million for office rental, based on an annual rate of $14,300 per person
• $564,200 for long distance telephone calls, teleconferencing and videoconferencing
• $18 million for hiring “limited replacements” for subject matter experts involved in the project
• $16 million for software licences and maintenance fees

So some thought from me on how to do more for less…

• Ditch the travel – most of these sorts of trips are mere Junkets (and given the budget figures, business class junkets at that). Hire consultants that can work remotely with a need for high frequency face to face sessions
• Ditch the “long distance telephone calls” – use Skype or another service to avoid large costs. Invest in a collaborative platform that allows for IM, voice, document sharing across large groups of users
• Ditch software licenses – build on top of OpenSource tools and technology – sure there may be some customization costs but it avoids the noose of license fees and upgrade paths
• Ditch the office rental – contract people that can hot desk, remote work work from somewhere other than the high rent United Nations locations
• “Subject matter experts”? ditch that – there are a bunch of people who, for an organization liek the United Nations, would happily give some time and skill. Crowdsource the bulk of this work – faster, cheaper and generally better
• “System build”? – Nope – use off the shelf OpenSource frameworks and customize to suit the use case

I reckon an agile approach, the use of OpenSource, a modern approach towards workplace management and a move away from UN bloat could see this project completed for a third of the budgeted cost, with greater extensibility and faster than otherwise.

Cool – anyone else want to join in submitting a proposal to the UN? An opportunity to leverage the collective wisdom of the Enterprise 2.0 community to drive some better outcomes for the global community – or something

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