Just finished an article on the hype surrounding the Apple Tablet PC. There are two things that appear apparent if history serves itself. One, Apple has created plenty of free press on the hype and why not, the iPhone is a HUGE success, so it breeds itself. And two, the user experience will likely be one of the best in computing. It appears a late January announcement is imminent.
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Clean user flow
I've been a fan of 37 Signals, a Chicago company that makes Backpack and Highrise products for the Internet (www.37signals.com). Their products offer excellent user interface design and the principals in the company are cult legends in the SaaS world. I recently took notice of a new blog for them called Design Explorations and it is an excellent narrative on the way software designers come to make decisions regarding user interface design.
I was especially intrigued by the posting regarding due dates on to-dos and not so much for the actual thought process, but more in the actual UI flow. You can find the post with a video at 37signals.com/designexplore/Basecamp_To-dos.
One of the principals at 37 Signals was one of the original architects of Ruby, an object oriented programming language. There is some Javascript here as well but the interactivity is outstanding with no screen refresh to accomplish the experience.
I was especially intrigued by the posting regarding due dates on to-dos and not so much for the actual thought process, but more in the actual UI flow. You can find the post with a video at 37signals.com/designexplore/Basecamp_To-dos.
One of the principals at 37 Signals was one of the original architects of Ruby, an object oriented programming language. There is some Javascript here as well but the interactivity is outstanding with no screen refresh to accomplish the experience.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
How to fail as a SaaS company
I've just finished reading a brief article on moving to SaaS by Abraham Sultan, an EVP at Apprenda. The article was entitled "How To Fail Miserably as a SaaS Company" and is a follow up to his presentation on the same. The article can be found here: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3842451/How-to-Fail-Miserably-as-a-SaaS-Company.htm.
One of the bullet points caught my eye and is similar in tone to one of my earlier posts on delivery model. Mr. Sultan states, "...customers are expecting the software to be updated frequently and to stay on top of current trends both in your industry as well as with general environmental events."
I believe customer expectation changes quickly in SaaS and is partly a result of the way it has been marketed as well as due to our expectations of what the Internet holds. The Internet is the holy grail of business potential, or so we have been led to believe for years now. It is the culmination of the social experience, it lets us reach markets and customers we never could reach before and its technology is the purple pill for all our previous business technical failures.
A cornerstone marketing statement I have heard over and over is that the IT responsibility is moved from your business to ours and updates are quick and seamless. This is a SaaS tenet. However, expectations must be adjusted for SaaS to succeed long term. Granted, the IT responsibility has shifted and for many smaller businesses, this is a boon. However we must remember what it takes to run one of these data centers and provide 99.98% up-time. We must be careful to market it as a quality improvement and not a magic bullet.
It is true, SaaS companies must deliver change frequently, but more importantly it must be change that is meaningful. Change for the simple sake of change is not change, it is controlled chaos. Meaningful change takes into account the specific needs of the users and targets that business need completely and efficiently. SaaS succeeds when expectations are marketed honestly and meaningful products are delivered. It is then that we understand the Service part of Software-as-a-Service.
One of the bullet points caught my eye and is similar in tone to one of my earlier posts on delivery model. Mr. Sultan states, "...customers are expecting the software to be updated frequently and to stay on top of current trends both in your industry as well as with general environmental events."
I believe customer expectation changes quickly in SaaS and is partly a result of the way it has been marketed as well as due to our expectations of what the Internet holds. The Internet is the holy grail of business potential, or so we have been led to believe for years now. It is the culmination of the social experience, it lets us reach markets and customers we never could reach before and its technology is the purple pill for all our previous business technical failures.
A cornerstone marketing statement I have heard over and over is that the IT responsibility is moved from your business to ours and updates are quick and seamless. This is a SaaS tenet. However, expectations must be adjusted for SaaS to succeed long term. Granted, the IT responsibility has shifted and for many smaller businesses, this is a boon. However we must remember what it takes to run one of these data centers and provide 99.98% up-time. We must be careful to market it as a quality improvement and not a magic bullet.
It is true, SaaS companies must deliver change frequently, but more importantly it must be change that is meaningful. Change for the simple sake of change is not change, it is controlled chaos. Meaningful change takes into account the specific needs of the users and targets that business need completely and efficiently. SaaS succeeds when expectations are marketed honestly and meaningful products are delivered. It is then that we understand the Service part of Software-as-a-Service.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Modular marketing
In an earlier post I spoke briefly about companies who choose to migrate their large enterprise products to a distributed software as a service model. In doing so, I believe many make mistakes in the transition by failing to see "the trees in the forest". There are opportunities hidden in the application that may present a restructuring opportunity for the organization. As mentioned before, I see this concept called "modular marketing".
Say for example you have a law office management system that handles things such as document management, scheduling, CRM functions, research, and the accounting functions of the firm. Traditionally, for a law firm to purchase your software they would need to purchase all of the integrated components in one management system package. You've likely identified your target market and sold many contracts and have a pretty good client base. The client base may be on a client-server environment or already on SaaS.
The key to modular marketing is looking at the individual business opportunities in the entire product. In our example above, there are 5, but there may be more. Instead of offering the entire product, it makes better sense to offer the products standalone and integrated. Once a data transfer model and format is agreed upon by the individual teams, each component can then be broken up. For example the team that is assigned to work on document management can build a standalone application for document management on its own deployment schedule. Provided the data components needed to make it communicate and integrate with CRM and other functions remain pristine, the company has now freed up the team to be autonomous and for QA to be more focused on that product and less on regression testing the application as a whole when that component is modified.
Secondly, from a sales perspective, the company has reopened the market to be viable for that component. They may have found a unique advantage in document management. Provided that a standard for data transfer is met, such as .xml, it can become easier to integrate with your competitors products by allowing your market to drive them to do so, without purchasing your entire product. As a company, you get your foot in the door by providing a complete solution to a specific business need. Many companies, especially in this economy, are reluctant to make global changes to their infrastructure for fear of the impact of change on their productivity. In this manner, your modular product provides them with a small change with big upside. You will have an easier time later integrating your other products as they change them out because you have the all-important foot in the door.
Lastly, from an internal capital perspective, modularizing allows companies to work on components and deliver faster to market on something salable. They do not need to wait for the restructure of the whole product and can see a quicker return on investment on the components.
Say for example you have a law office management system that handles things such as document management, scheduling, CRM functions, research, and the accounting functions of the firm. Traditionally, for a law firm to purchase your software they would need to purchase all of the integrated components in one management system package. You've likely identified your target market and sold many contracts and have a pretty good client base. The client base may be on a client-server environment or already on SaaS.
The key to modular marketing is looking at the individual business opportunities in the entire product. In our example above, there are 5, but there may be more. Instead of offering the entire product, it makes better sense to offer the products standalone and integrated. Once a data transfer model and format is agreed upon by the individual teams, each component can then be broken up. For example the team that is assigned to work on document management can build a standalone application for document management on its own deployment schedule. Provided the data components needed to make it communicate and integrate with CRM and other functions remain pristine, the company has now freed up the team to be autonomous and for QA to be more focused on that product and less on regression testing the application as a whole when that component is modified.
Secondly, from a sales perspective, the company has reopened the market to be viable for that component. They may have found a unique advantage in document management. Provided that a standard for data transfer is met, such as .xml, it can become easier to integrate with your competitors products by allowing your market to drive them to do so, without purchasing your entire product. As a company, you get your foot in the door by providing a complete solution to a specific business need. Many companies, especially in this economy, are reluctant to make global changes to their infrastructure for fear of the impact of change on their productivity. In this manner, your modular product provides them with a small change with big upside. You will have an easier time later integrating your other products as they change them out because you have the all-important foot in the door.
Lastly, from an internal capital perspective, modularizing allows companies to work on components and deliver faster to market on something salable. They do not need to wait for the restructure of the whole product and can see a quicker return on investment on the components.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Software as a Service a delivery model?
Software as a service is a delivery model.
I've read many posts of late trying to explain software as a service, cloud computing, service model marketing, etc. But if you boil it all down, SaaS is a delivery model. A different (and successful) way of delivering software. Sadly, many companies are trying to port their existing applications over to the Internet by recreating their applications in similar formats to their CD, DVD, bundled/boxed software. This is a disastrous approach for a number of reasons.
Each iteration of the bundled software made the product bigger and harder to maintain. Hence, if you are a software company, why SaaS looked so attractive to you in the first place. It made it easier to distribute. One update and everyone was on the same code-base. No more supporting multiple iterations of the software either and bogging down support staff with the burden of knowing all the version changes. It made delivery easier.
However, along the way companies began to recreate rather than re-think in an effort to ride the big Web 2.0 wave. Each day we learn of old products now being re-marketed on the Internet as SaaS. It seems like a good idea, right? We get to deliver faster to market and reduce delivery costs. But it is still the same old product.
Companies need to rethink their current software model and begin to look at what I am going to call here as Modular Marketing. In coming posts I will discuss my thoughts on how SaaS provides companies with an opportunity to re-engineer their revenue models around singular processes that not only can stand on their own but also complement each other in their integration. The most successful SaaS companies on the Internet are built around similar complementary models.
SaaS is definitely a delivery model. But it can be one that delivers on an expansion of market opportunities as well as more efficient workflows and integration.
I've read many posts of late trying to explain software as a service, cloud computing, service model marketing, etc. But if you boil it all down, SaaS is a delivery model. A different (and successful) way of delivering software. Sadly, many companies are trying to port their existing applications over to the Internet by recreating their applications in similar formats to their CD, DVD, bundled/boxed software. This is a disastrous approach for a number of reasons.
Each iteration of the bundled software made the product bigger and harder to maintain. Hence, if you are a software company, why SaaS looked so attractive to you in the first place. It made it easier to distribute. One update and everyone was on the same code-base. No more supporting multiple iterations of the software either and bogging down support staff with the burden of knowing all the version changes. It made delivery easier.
However, along the way companies began to recreate rather than re-think in an effort to ride the big Web 2.0 wave. Each day we learn of old products now being re-marketed on the Internet as SaaS. It seems like a good idea, right? We get to deliver faster to market and reduce delivery costs. But it is still the same old product.
Companies need to rethink their current software model and begin to look at what I am going to call here as Modular Marketing. In coming posts I will discuss my thoughts on how SaaS provides companies with an opportunity to re-engineer their revenue models around singular processes that not only can stand on their own but also complement each other in their integration. The most successful SaaS companies on the Internet are built around similar complementary models.
SaaS is definitely a delivery model. But it can be one that delivers on an expansion of market opportunities as well as more efficient workflows and integration.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
What makes a great web application?
Hope the 2008 holidays were good for everyone. As I start off 2009 I am curious from a design perspective..."What makes a great Internet application?"
This is a more difficult question than first appears. Is it that the application is simple and solves a singular task? Programs like Twitter and Backpack make singular work processes and social communications easier by attacking just that problem and solving it. Does an application have to be large and imposing to be a great application? Do we need our applications to do so many things we might never use them all? Or do we just need a hundred applications that do those 100 things extremely well. I call the latter, the iPhone philosophy. In the iPhone, the platform was developed and little else. Then applications for it sprouted up overnight and a culture was born.
From a business perspective, Salesforce.com has made millions creating a core CRM platform and extending it by offering the ability to connect to it through a freely available development platform. All over the world people and companies are building add-on apps for Salesforce.com making it a super-app that can be used by any industry. If an industry doesn't have coverage, someone can just build an app for it.
In my humble opinion, all apps over the next 10 years will be built on this same philosophy. But is the best of breed approach the best approach? Comments welcome.....
This is a more difficult question than first appears. Is it that the application is simple and solves a singular task? Programs like Twitter and Backpack make singular work processes and social communications easier by attacking just that problem and solving it. Does an application have to be large and imposing to be a great application? Do we need our applications to do so many things we might never use them all? Or do we just need a hundred applications that do those 100 things extremely well. I call the latter, the iPhone philosophy. In the iPhone, the platform was developed and little else. Then applications for it sprouted up overnight and a culture was born.
From a business perspective, Salesforce.com has made millions creating a core CRM platform and extending it by offering the ability to connect to it through a freely available development platform. All over the world people and companies are building add-on apps for Salesforce.com making it a super-app that can be used by any industry. If an industry doesn't have coverage, someone can just build an app for it.
In my humble opinion, all apps over the next 10 years will be built on this same philosophy. But is the best of breed approach the best approach? Comments welcome.....
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