Category: SaaS

ThinkFiftyBucks would have worked for me…

thinkfree logoEarlier in the year, ThinkFree offered bloggers a free version of its portable office software. I passed on that offer, but when it came around again last week, I said I’d give it a go. I remembered that Ismael Ghalimi has been a big fan of ThinkFree for a while now and thought I recalled the offer for the free software had something to do with Ismael’s valiant crusade to free us all of our hard drives. For him and for Brian Solis (handles PR for ThinkFree), who wrote a blog post today that was just poetry to my blogger reading eyes, I decided I better start really experimenting with ThinkFree and then let you all know what I think of it.

First of all, ThinkFree basically has cloned Microsoft Office, Excel, and PowerPoint and is offering these common office applications essentially free if you use the online version, or for about $50 if you use the portable version, which I was sent from the PR firm. I believe there is a server and desktop version, as well. ThinkFree’s bizarro version of Microsoft’s products are Write, Calc, and Show. I launched all three applications, and it was uncanny how similar they are. BUT– at a fraction of the cost– if not for free. What’s not to love??? As I trolled around the web, I found more advantages of ThinkFree over Microsoft, such as their variety of choice in viewers, plug-ins, APIs, widgets, and even the ability to download the apps to your ipod. Wow. Very cool.

Now granted. I don’t pass myself off as a product reviewer for a moment. But as a mere mortal user who writes documents, uses spreadsheets casually, and creates simple powerpoint presentations, ThinkFree can satisfy all my basic needs and more. Why would I want to enslave myself to Microsoft Office for these simple apps? I actually bristle when Office makes me do something annoying these days, like I saw in this post on Outlook archiving while trolling the web.

Is ThinkFree the web 2.0 killer app for the Enterprise? Probably not, unfortunately. In an interview with ThinkFree’s Jonathan Crow, Director of Marketing on the Under the Radar Blog, Crow is asked about his target customer:

Who IS your target customer? Who is NOT your target customer?
Of our over 250,000 ThinkFree Online users we estimate that roughly 35% are SMB users, 30% are educational users, 15% are individuals within Enterprise organizations, and the remaining 20% are consumers.

What we’ve been seeing in large enterprises, is painfully slow adoption to web 2.0 alternatives, but as products like ThinkFree are mind-numbingly easy to use, familiar, and either free or so cheap it’s not worth expensing, we may start seeing user-revolt-creep start infiltrating the walled gardens of enterprise command central. I guess it’s just a matter of time. The best imagery I heard recently along these lines was Euan Semple‘s description of unleashing “a thousand Trojan mice” into the enterprise and seeing what happens. ThinkFree is a killer mouse that could roar.

I’m a convert. Give it a try. I’d be very surprised if you’re not as amazed as I am at how perfectly the ThinkFree team has replicated the Microsoft user experience with none of the Microsoft baggage.

The CEO Whisperers

During the 90s, when I was tracking the IT services market, there was a continuous blurring of roles and activity between Management Consulting firms, Strategy firms, and good ole’ IT services firms. IBM had IBM Consulting, CSC had CSC Index, EDS bought A.T. Kearney— throw in a few strong boutiques, and they all competed against McKinsey, Booz Allen and Bain. It got really wild during the dotcom run-up toward the late 90s, as web 1.0 approached because a lot of these guys left the security of these large firms to run start-ups. Looking back, there was one reason these guys made good candidates to run web startups– they spoke the CEO’s language. They could persuade and convince a board room to make a “bet your business” proposition. Now luckily, not a lot of F500 CEOs made decisions they couldn’t undo based on dotcom disasters, and most of the well-healed consultants went back to their high billable rate profession after the bubble had burst.

I’m writing about this today because I’ve participated recently in two events on adoption on Enterprise 2.0. One was a live event in NY which drew mostly a financial services audience and one was a webinar with approximately 50 callers participating.

Today, I’m writing from my room at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida (pictured left) where I’m about to attend a few social events with CEOs who are looking for answers about this new wave of Internet disruption or opportunity– as the case may be. I promised not to flack here about BSG, but we did make a terrific acquisition this week which gives us the privilege of bringing this story to the executive suite of some of the most well known brands in the world. You can read about goings on at BSG on a blog I’ve started here. I have to admit, frankly, the chance to evangelize on the next generation web to customers like American Airlines, British Telecom, Deutsche Bank, DaimlerChrysler, DuPont, ING Bank, Johnson & Johnson, Marriott, Merck, Pfizer, Rolls Royce, Royal Bank, and Shell gives me goosebumps– even in the hot Florida sun.

Even though we speak a lot in the blogosphere about the user-generated, collaborative, self-service benefits of social media and enterprise 2.0 technologies– the radical, cultural, enterprise-wide transformation we’re looking for is going to have to come from the top of what are still hierarchical organizations. And for that discussion to begin, the best tool we have today, may be the same tool that has worked for decades– the golf ball.

THIS changes everything— Now it gets interesting.

5/18 OKAY. Just got a WSJ alert that Microsoft is buying aQuantive which owns Avenue A|Razorfish. More on this later.

5/20 Update:

I was going to write a new post, but I didn’t want the headline I feel I must attribute to this acquisition to show up on feeds… which is this:

It’s the People, Stupid. (!)

I haven’t studied the coverage, blogs or commentary on this, but I’m giving you my off the cuff reaction to this acquisition and why I was so excited about it when I first saw it. It’s not how much Microsoft paid for Aquantive, the fact that now Microsoft will get into the advertising game, a revenue play, a beat Google strategy, a grease the skids for Yahoo strategy– none of that analysis is meaningful to me from my perspective. Microsoft IS enterprise 1.0; it still is the evil empire, I suppose. (Just humor me here, please? Here I go mashing up Star Wars with Trekkie zealotry, but like I’ve said before, we’re trying to save the galaxy for geeks of all nations, eh?) To introduce Aquantive to the Microsoft family which owns the #1 worldwide interactive agency in the world– whose median age worker is probably 27? Just a guess, but I’ll confirm… is real progress. With this acquisition comes fresh thinking– new ways of applying web technology to consumers and business. Doesn’t anybody even remember Andrew McAfee’s “Now THAT’s what I’m Talking About!” ?

Shake. Rattle. And Roll.

The evangelist in me sees a potential cometojesus awakening at Microsoft through the eyes of these nextgeners… yet, the old analyst in me fears my friends at AA|RF will sit in endless meetings much like canaries in a coal mine. But, I’m a glass is half full person– I gotta believe. Time. It’s on our side.

Enterprise 2.0: what’s in and what’s out?

I found myself surprised that Euan Semple is a Facebook user. I asked him about it, and he says it’s not just for kids, “There are loads of my friends in Facebook and it is good at helping us be social.” he replied. And like a select few of the bloggers I follow, I have not succumbed to the Twitter addiction, but find myself a little jealous that Stowe Boyd is now a friend of John Edwards and Barack Obama if only for a few random minutes at a time.

Social media knocked me over again last week reading the reports from my fellow Enterprise Irregulars who were blogging at Sapphire– SAP’s flagship conference for its friends and fans. This screen shot of SAP’s Harmony, an internal MySpace/Linked-in of sorts, got forwarded immediately to our head of HR. We’ve been using Ning for our internal communications– which we are really having a lot of fun with, but seeing this, I realized how much more fun we could have if we customized Ning for our company– and then for our customers.

SAP's Harmony

Harmony screen courtesy Craig Cmehil

What really caught my eye last week was Stephen Danelutti’s initial attempt at drawing up a framework for enterprise 2.0. I comb the web daily for enterprise 2.0 posts and news, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone take a stab at defining what is including specifically in the definition. For instance, we probably all agree that McAfee’s SLATES is included (Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extentions, and Signals). This would include all blog, wiki, and search technology. McAfee talks a lot about predictive markets too, though. I would add mash-ups, most SaaS apps, and anything AJAX-built, no? I don’t have Dion Hinchcliffe’s gift for drawing diagrams, but I’d love to hear some input on this.

What will the new spring crop yield?

I’ve been taking a lot of satisfaction these past few weeks in how our little enterprise 2.0 garden is growing. In the past few weeks I’ve been asked to podcast, to appear on a video segment, and to participate in an enterprise 2.0 “rave.” All good stuff. The analyst and media coverage of enterprise 2.0 has really started to pick up too. I’m particularly encouraged by the management findings and recommendations we’ve seen coming out of MIT’s Sloan Management Report and McKinsey. I guess they legitimize our inner-circle zealot ramblings.

A few items of interest: I attended Ajax World a couple weeks ago. I listened to a few of the speakers, but spent more time trolling the vendors in the exhibit hall for real examples of how Ajax solutions were generating real business advantages for their customers. Nexaweb had some interesting case studies. They quickly rattled off projects at Bank of Toyko, Mitsubishi, Seimans, AFLAC and EMC where companies had built rich Internet applications that were making a difference in their markets. Another interesting observation was a casual chat I had with Chris Warner at JackBe. He basically told me the audience makeup is different this year. That it was not so much developers in jeans and ponytails asking technical questions, but guys in Polo shirts and khakis asking how to solve a business problem. He said, “When suits start walking around, we’ll know the market has matured.”

I ran into Dion Hinchcliffe in the lounge. Dion and Jeremy Geelan had kindly asked me to participate in their ground-breaking Enterprise 2.0 premier web TV segment. Unfortunately, I had to decline, but look forward to future episodes. Don’t miss the first episode, airing Monday, April 9.

Here is Dion’s description of the show:

The Enterprise 2.0 TV Show Airs Web-Wide This April from the Reuters TV Studio in Times Square

We’ve teamed up with former BBC producer Jeremy Geelan — and IT industry maven extraordinaire — to create a new world-class Web-based TV show with broadcast quality production values that obsessively covers the rapidly emerging topic of current industry fascination: Enterprise 2.0. Taped in leading venues throughout the country, the Enterprise 2.0 TV Show is designed as an open, freely-distributable communication stream created to tap the exploding popularity and delivery models of the online video medium. The show is carefully crafted to help non-technical business leaders explore the power and potential of the very latest industry developments on the Internet. Each show delves into the most important new trends that are helping reshape the face of the enterprise today and have the potential to unleash significant productivity gains and competitive advantage. Episode #1, a deep dive into the moving parts of Enterprise 2.0, has already been taped with industry leaders such as SocialText, Kapow, Jubii, and Near-Time and will be ‘airing’ in April on the show site as well as everywhere else on the Web. Also, if you are interested in appearing on the show or want to advertise or sponsor, please contact Jeremy directly.

I first started writing about what we now call “Enterprise 2.0” the end of June, last year. I believe it was about this time last year that McAfee published his seminal, “Enterprise 2.0: the Dawn of Emergent Collaboration.” Now, barely a year later, we’ve got our own T.V. show and we’re hosting Rave parties (more to come on that). I’m looking forward to harvesting the rewards of this year’s crop. It’s fun blogging history in the making.

———

Update: the Enterprise 2.0 Rave has a web site now… Lots of buzz on this already.   They tell me they’re creating a button for blogger discounts, but if you want save $250 now, sign up here.  I think they are capping the number of attendees, so it’s first-come, first-served.

Disruptive Technology makes smooth market for SaaS Integrator

Had an excellent chat this week with Narinder Singh, founder of Appirio based in San Francisco. Singh and his colleagues started up Appirio to take advantage of the next wave in enterprise adoption of SaaS applications such as Salesforce.com and SuccessFactors. With backgrounds from SAP, Webmethods, Borland, and Accenture, Singh and his colleagues know the enterprise market cold.

His predictions for the disruption of the enterprise app ecosystem were particularly interesting to me. Singh feels today’s enterprise vendors are falling into the classic trap of the innovator’s dilemma— how do you serve two masters– move to embrace disruptive technology while preserving your existing base? Further, he feels traditional, large SIs are also hooked on the enterprise drug with revenues pushing toward $10B for Accenture and IBM alone in enterprise app implementation and support services. On-demand also affects ISVs in that changes Oracle or SAP make in their core products won’t affect an ISV until maybe a year or so because of the complexity of the cycle in upgrades, etc. “In the on-demand model, if Salesforce innovates in an area where you [the ISV] have previously created some value add, over night their entire customer base has access to that innovation,” says Singh. The model of on-demand forces everyone to stay on their toes, and Singh believes this is good for customers.

He also sees his firm and firms like his as playing a unique role in helping enterprises with the SaaS (r)evolution. He sees a wide open opportunity to “bring the customer back to the center of innovation.” For instance, he’s working with a client to mesh their HR data (SuccessFactors) with their sales data (Salesforce) to deliver a strategic view on how to manage sales performance by increasing quality and reducing ramp-up time. The opportunity to observe, assemble and rapidly deliver new solutions is unique to this era of systems integration. The role of the SaaS-savvy services provider is more of an emissary than vendor, too. The business units are rapidly adopting SaaS under the radar of the CIO. Singh feels his firm is a natural to rationalize the SaaS silos within an enterprise and to help the CIO embrace the new technology, rather than resist it. By the same token, he feels the more successful and comfortable CIOs become with leveraging SaaS and web 2.0 solutions in the enterprise, the greater the disruption will become for the enterprise eco-system.

The following is a chart from a paper from Appirio entitled Services 2.0. It’s a good read for IT Services fans and enterprise app stalwarts alike.

before and after IT Serviceds

Another interesting paper in the IT Services sector was recently published by the Outsourcing Institute. If you want to know more about Outsourcing 2.0, you can download the paper here.