27/01/2012 Posted in Business 2 Comments

On Privacy, and Software Vendor’s Access to Customer Data

By Ben Kepes

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

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26/01/2012 Posted in Business Leave a comment

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By Ben Kepes

This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (c13f720d-3fb8-4863-a699-9e360e90990a – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

25/01/2012 Posted in Business 1 Comment

Xero Market Update–Hockeystick Achieved

By Ben Kepes

Xero has just given a market update in advance of heir partner conference next week. The numbers are all heading in the right direction despite the fact that Xero is yet to break even – previous market announcements indicated that Xero was following a strategy that put market growth ahead

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25/01/2012 Posted in Business Leave a comment

MinuteDock Launches on Intuit’s Partner Platform

By Ben Kepes

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

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25/01/2012 Posted in Business Leave a comment

FireHost Switches on European Cloud Hosting. But What Does “Secure: Actually Mean

By Ben Kepes

FireHost (more on them here) a cloud company that is targeting large companies with particular compliance and high traffic needs – customers span the eCommerce, SaaS, healthcare and security areas is today announcing the opening of its European operations. It’s an exciting move, especially for someone who has a penchant

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24/01/2012 Posted in Business Leave a comment

Huddle Fights to Gain Viral Uptake

By Ben Kepes

  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

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23/01/2012 Posted in Business 1 Comment

FreeAgent Eases Life for Freelancers and their Expenses Conundrum

By Ben Kepes

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

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20/01/2012 Posted in Business 5 Comments

On TOSCA and Cloud Standards. MyPOV

By Ben Kepes

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

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18/01/2012 Posted in Business Leave a comment

Is agility and focus worth a price premium – on converged infrastructure costing more…

By Ben Kepes

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”

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17/01/2012 Posted in Business 2 Comments

Intuit Pushing Intacct for QuickBooks Graduates

By Ben Kepes

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

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The Author

Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. More on Ben

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