Business « The Diversity Blog – SaaS, Cloud & Business Strategy

UnemployedMBA–Grab Him While You Can

December 7, 2011

Business

Business, marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Master of Business Administration, Unemployment

Last week at CloudBeat as I was decompressing for a session, a well dressed gentleman approached me for a chat. Nimish Jalan proceeded to discuss with me the specific topics of the panel I’d just moderated, some themes he’d…

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iComplete–The World’s Simplest CRM?

November 17, 2011

Business

Business, Customer relationship management, google, Internet marketing, Myles Hantler, Telephony

There’s been a lot of talk among a new breed of CRM providers recently about finding the right balance of functionality and complexity to meet the needs of very small businesses. While salesforce has cleaned up in the enterprise…

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A Checklist for Customer Cloud Security

November 11, 2011

Business

backup, Business, cloud, cloud computing, Password, security

I often hear how Cloud is insecure from people who claim that unauthorized access is a real and significant risk for users of Cloud Computing. It always kind of frustrates me as, in my (admittedly somewhat biased) view, Cloud…

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Totango Powers SaaS Vendor Insights

October 10, 2011

Business

Application service provider, Business, Customer relationship management, Engine Yard, Software as a Service, Totango

Recently I’ve been doing a fair amount of advisory work with SaaS startups that are just taking their first tentative steps to market. I’ve sat in meetings at length trying to drill into sales cycles and pricing strategies and…

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You’re Never Too Big–DropBox Drops the Ball

October 7, 2011

Business

Business, Drew Houston, dropbox, start up

I spend a bunch of time talking to different vendors about their products and services – having done what I do for a few years now it’s interesting to see how companies that I knew when they were tiny…

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Dropping Costs While Still Providing Support–A SmartPayroll Case Study

September 29, 2011

Business

Business, Customer, customer service, rackspace, smartpayroll, Zappos

Over the past couple of years I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time with Asantha Wijeyratne, CEO of SmartPayroll, a New Zealand Payroll provider. I’ve been interested to talk to him, partly because he’s a lovely guy with an…

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NIST Decides to Redefine the English Language, Broker != Service Intermediary

September 12, 2011

Business

broker, Business, cloud computing, enStratus, National Institute of Standards and Technology, RightScale

Update – I omitted to mention the fact that fellow Kiwi (well sort of) and resident grump Hoff was a big part of the discussion that prompted this post. Even if he thinks it’s not an important discussion to…

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Salesforce for Quickbooks for Salesforce for Quickbooks….

September 9, 2011

Business

Business, Customer, Customer relationship management, intuit, quickbooks, Salesforce.com, Small business, Software as a Service

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…

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Acumatica Offers Manufacturing Software on Azure

September 8, 2011

Business

acumatica, Business, cloud computing, Enterprise resource planning, Manufacturing, netsuite, Software as a Service

I have a bit of a particular interest in Cloud ERP providers moving into the manufacturing space. Manufacturing is a highly complex space and one where the traditional ERP vendors have a very strong position – manufacturing relies on…

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Focus, Focus, Focus

August 26, 2011

Business

Adam Smith, Brad Feld, Business, cloudcomputing, CloudU, Foundry, TechStars

First published on the Rackspace blog. I’ve been reading a copy of Do More Faster recently. Do More Faster is a kind of an entrepreneurs guide book written by two well known authors; Brad Feld, founder and investor of the Foundry and…

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