WESTON, Fla., Jul 07, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Ultimate Software , the leading provider of unified, end-to-end human capital management (HCM) SaaS solutions in North America, will be hosting a conference call on Tuesday, July 27 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time to discuss its financial results for the second quarter of 2010.

Forward-looking information about future company performance may be discussed during the teleconference call. This call is open to the public and will be hosted by Scott Scherr, CEO, president, and founder, and Mitchell Dauerman, CFO, executive vice president, and treasurer. The call will be audiocast live via Vcall at http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=159791.

We recommend that you access this site 10 minutes before the start of the call. Windows Media Player or Real Player software is required to listen to the call and can be downloaded from the site. The call will be available for replay at the same Web address at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time on July 27, 2010.

Ultimate’s press release for second-quarter financial results will be available after 4:00 p.m. Eastern time on July 27 on the company’s Web site at www.ultimatesoftware.com.

About Ultimate

The leading provider of unified, end-to-end human capital management (HCM) SaaS solutions in North America, Ultimate markets its award-winning UltiPro solution as an on-demand service through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Based in Weston, FL, Ultimate employs approximately 1,000 professionals who are focused on developing the highest quality products and services. In 2009, Ultimate was awarded first place in the People’s Choice Stevie(R) competition for Favorite New SaaS Product and was ranked the #1 best medium-sized company to work for in America by the Great Place to Work(R) Institute for the second consecutive year. In 2008, Ultimate was the first HR/payroll SaaS provider to be audited and awarded the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Certification for security management and was recognized for having the #1 “Best Product Development Team” in the nation by the American Business Awards. Ultimate has more than 1,900 customers representing diverse industries, including such organizations as Adobe Systems Incorporated, The Container Store, Culligan International, Elizabeth Arden, Major League Baseball, The New York Yankees Baseball Team, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House. More information on Ultimate’s products and services can be found at www.ultimatesoftware.com.

UltiPro is a registered trademark of The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. All other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE: Ultimate Software

Recently Launched Software-as-a-Service Offering Benefits from Scalability, Efficiency Provided by Terremark’s Industry-Leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service Solution

MIAMI, Jun 28, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Terremark Worldwide, Inc. (TMRK 8.32, -0.02, -0.24%) , a leading global provider of managed IT infrastructure services, today announced that Pitney Bowes Business Insight has selected Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud as the underlying infrastructure for its recently launched MapInfo(R) Stratus(TM) solution. Pitney Bowes MapInfo Stratus is a SaaS-based solution for publishing and sharing location-based data and services, providing government and enterprise customers with instant access to location intelligence analysis.

By leveraging the flexibility and scalability of Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud, Pitney Bowes Business Insight is able to quickly respond to customer demand and deliver leading-edge solutions while minimizing their overall IT infrastructure costs. Like many other providers of SaaS services, Pitney Bowes Business Insight continues to develop and launch new cloud-based offerings and Terremark’s highly reliable and fully secure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering offers the ideal foundation to deliver these services to private and public-sector organizations.

“The ability to rapidly respond to our customers’ evolving demands is a key driver for our continued business growth, and leveraging Terremark’s IaaS offering enables us to deliver our innovative products and services in the most cost-effective and timely fashion,” said Kurt Jackson, managing director for OnDemand at Pitney Bowes Business Insight. “With a proven track record of powering mission-critical applications across government agencies and large enterprises, the Terremark Enterprise Cloud was the ideal choice to support our SaaS-based MapInfo Stratus solution. We look forward to continuing our strategic relationship with Terremark as we bring more SaaS-based solutions to market.”

Widely recognized as a leading IaaS service, Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud offers government and enterprise customers the ability to provision, configure, deploy and manage computing resources for their most essential applications in minutes, giving customers control over a flexible pool of computing resources with a web-based console for deploying server capacity on demand. Along with the ability to dynamically provision and deploy IT resources in real-time, the platform is secured by a suite of managed security services that includes comprehensive vulnerability assessments, log aggregation and event correlation, network session flow analysis, attack replay, and application firewall management.

“SaaS and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers are increasingly turning to Terremark for the cloud-based infrastructure needed to deliver their solutions because of the security, performance and comprehensive feature set we’re able to offer through our IaaS offerings. The powerful combination of our industry-leading cloud computing solutions, full suite of information security services and world-class datacenter and network infrastructure continues to resonate with leading providers,” said Barry Field, Terremark’s Senior Vice President for U.S. Commercial Sales. “Pitney Bowes Business Insight’s selection of our Enterprise Cloud underscores the highly compelling value enterprise-class IaaS offerings provide to companies that are building services designed to deliver the power and efficiency of cloud computing.”

About Terremark Worldwide, Inc.

Terremark Worldwide /quotes/comstock/15*!tmrk/quotes/nls/tmrk (TMRK 8.32, -0.02, -0.24%) is a leading global provider of IT infrastructure services delivered on the industry’s most robust and advanced technology platform. Leveraging data centers in the United States, Europe and Latin America with access to massive and diverse network connectivity, Terremark delivers government and enterprise customers a comprehensive suite of managed solutions including managed hosting, colocation, disaster recovery, security, data storage and cloud computing services. Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud computing architecture delivers the agility, scale and economic benefits of cloud computing to mission-critical enterprise and Web 2.0 applications and its DigitalOps(R) service platform combines end-to-end systems management workflow with a comprehensive customer portal.

More information about Terremark Worldwide can be found at http://www.terremark.com.

Check out the business hosting that suits you.

About Pitney Bowes Business Insight

Pitney Bowes Business Insight, a division of Pitney Bowes Software Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes Inc., provides leading enterprises with solutions to acquire, serve and grow customer relationships. Our software and services enable organizations to turn data into critical customer insight that provides the competitive advantage required to succeed in today’s global markets. With a deeper understanding of its customers, organizations can establish meaningful connections and build more profitable customer relationships. Visit http://www.pbinsight.com and http://www.pb.com for more information.

PLEASANTON, Calif., Jun 08, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — QLT Ophthalmics, Inc. (QOI), a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of QLT Inc. /quotes/comstock/15*!qlti/quotes/nls/qlti (QLTI 6.07, -0.18, -2.88%) /quotes/comstock/11t!qlt (CA:QLT 6.44, 0.00, 0.00%) , selected Veeva System’s multi-tenant SaaS CRM system built on the cloud computing model. QOI was formed by QLT Inc. in Q4 2009 to take over the sales and marketing of Visudyne(R) in the U.S. from Novartis Pharma AG (“Novartis”). Veeva CRM(TM) proved the only system flexible and scalable enough to meet QOI’s rapidly growing needs, according to QOI’s Director of Commercial Operations, Scott Jones.

“Veeva CRM is easily scalable, which was very important to us as we hope to scale-up our commercial operations as we bring new therapeutics to the market,” said Jones. “Plus, the Veeva CRM system is as flexible in its pricing model as it is technologically. We didn’t have to make a huge investment in Veeva up-front but when we are ready for more ‘system’ with additional functionality and seat licenses, we can pay incrementally to build on and not have wasted any money with our initial outlay.”

The ophthalmic pharmaceutical company went live with the complete Veeva CRM suite in February. A multi-tenant SaaS application built on the cloud computing model, Veeva CRM requires no hardware or software to purchase, scale, or maintain. Plus, customers benefit from free, automatic upgrades every 90 days so users will always be working on the latest version of the software with the very latest compliance changes and system enhancements– all very appealing to small companies like QOI.

“We looked at most of the Pharma CRM vendors, but knew fairly quickly that Veeva was the best fit for us. The fact that they were able to implement the system in less than 6 weeks was the final feather in their cap,” concluded Jones.

About Veeva CRM

The Veeva CRM suite of applications, comprised of VBioPharma(TM), VMobile(TM), and VInsights(TM), is the life sciences industry’s top multi-tenant SaaS-based CRM solution. As the foundation, VBioPharma offers multiple editions in one CRM product to accommodate the unique needs of various life sciences commercial teams. It is also the only Pharma CRM application to come pre-validated for PDMA and 21 CFR Part 11 compliance. The complete Veeva CRM suite gives customers the mobility and reporting solutions needed to drive user adoption and sales effectiveness.

About Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems is the leader in multi-tenant SaaS-based solutions for the global life sciences industry. Veeva has dozens of customers ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies with thousands of users to emerging biotechs commercializing their first products. Veeva customers achieve the fastest time to value through the deployment of fully functional applications that are flexible, simple to deploy, inexpensive to operate, and provide a superior user experience. Veeva is a privately-held company headquartered in Pleasanton, CA. For more information, visit www.veevasystems.com.

About QLT Ophthalmics, Inc. (QOI)

QOI is a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of QLT Inc. QOI was formed to commercialize QLT pharmaceutical and device products for the ophthalmic community. QOI’s current mission is to support and market Visudyne across the United States.

For widespread SaaS adoption, security solutions to control and protect critical data cannot come at the expense of functionality

PerspecSys Inc. (www.perspecsys.com), maker of a cloud data security platform that ensures full control and protection of sensitive data used in the public cloud, said today that the knowledge and governance gap that hinders the adoption of cloud-based software-as-a-service, or SaaS, may be narrowing but that significant work remains to be done.

The prospect of cloud computing has been broadly embraced by the marketplace due to the dramatic benefits it offers over traditional enterprise applications installed behind the user’s firewall. Gartner has forecast the worldwide SaaS market to double from $8 billion in 2009 to $16 billion by the end of 2013, as “tighter capital budgets in the current economic environment demand leaner alternatives, popularity increases, and interest for platform as a service and cloud computing grows.”

However, since SaaS offers almost immediate time to value, vendors such as Salesforce.com have enjoyed great success selling to line-of-business managers in enterprises, often bypassing the security and governance rigor associated with traditional software implementations.

This has created a governance gap that potentially makes these enterprises non-compliant with legal, regulatory or internal governance policies. For example, in the recent “Security of Cloud Computing” study by the Ponemon Institute and CA Inc., more than 50 percent of respondents in the U.S. said their organization was unaware of all the cloud services deployed in their enterprise. These rogue users threaten the security of the organization’s sensitive data.

“Enterprises that are adopting cloud applications such as Salesforce.com are increasingly doing so along with the implementation of SaaS security solutions,” said Jeff Campbell, president and CEO of PerspecSys. “This is indicative of IT adapting their infrastructure to address the unique security requirements for cloud computing in support of the evolving needs of the business. However, the key challenge that remains is ensuring security without sacrificing functionality.”

THE THREE LAYERS OF THE PUBLIC CLOUD

The public cloud is divided into three layers. The first is platform as a service (PaaS), which is governed by standards set forth by Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). The second is infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which is governed by the SAS 70 II auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

The third layer, software as a service (SaaS), where user’s data resides, has attracted the most interest and positive response from the market place, yet it is the one layer of the cloud not governed by any standards to ensure data security.

THE SECURITY CONUNDRUM OF SAAS

This lack of security regulation and standard in the data layer presents huge adoption barriers for many enterprises.

In its March 2010 Security Spending Survey, Goldman Sachs observed a significant shift in user sentiment to cloud and SaaS solutions. In its survey, only 24 percent of respondents said they would not use any SaaS or cloud applications until they have more clarity on how to secure their data, compared to 46 percent in an October 2009 survey. Goldman Sachs attributed this shift in attitude to companies’ abilities to design customized solutions to solve some of the data security problems, as 20 percent, (versus 10 percent previously) now say that they use the cloud after an additional security solution has been purchased.

However, these customized or third-party security solutions – mash-ups developed in-house, application integration, and encryption tools – can significantly impair the functionality of the cloud application.

Consequently, the public cloud still presents serious issues for many organizations, including data privacy demanded by regulatory compliance requirements, accepted industry standards and the organization’s own internal directives; data residency that dictates control and governance of data, including its backup and recovery; and ensuring data security from both external and internal threats.

In its March 2010 report, “Top Threats to Cloud Computing,” the Cloud Security Alliance highlighted common cloud-computing threats, including shared-technology issues, data loss or leakage, and account or service hijacking. It’s these threats to sensitive data that cause C-level decision makers to block adoption of SaaS applications.

The challenge for most organizations is to take the robust governance that typically already exists for enterprise-sensitive data behind the firewall and transfer this to the cloud.

“While IT departments can set and manage policies regarding platforms and infrastructure, regulatory compliance means the top-level executives must take responsibility for their data protection,” said Terry Woloszyn, founder and CTO of PerspecSys. “PerspecSys allows the enterprise to apply their current data compliance standards and procedures to sensitive cloud data as well.”

AN APPROACH THAT DOESN’T SACRIFICE FUNCTIONALITY FOR SECURITY

PerspecSys has eliminated the security-functionality paradox of the cloud with its Privacy, Residency and Security data governance platform, the PRS Server.

The PRS Server addresses the current concerns surrounding cloud adoption, namely the ceding to the cloud provider of control over private and sensitive data such as company secrets, personally identifiable data such as customer records, and other commercially sensitive information. PerspecSys allows the company to retain the control over sensitive data, thereby mitigating the emerging threats to cloud applications, and remaining compliant with regulatory and standards requirements.

“We sincerely believe SaaS in the public cloud is the future,” said Campbell. “But without a platform that can maintain the integrity of the value proposition and the functionality of applications in the public cloud while mitigating their inherent privacy, data residency and cloud security concerns, widespread adoption simply will not happen.”

The PRS Server has an available plug-in for Salesforce.com, the most widely adopted SaaS platform. PerspecSys plans to apply the same principles to other cloud applications in additional plug-ins to be released.

Source: www.prnewswire.com

SEATTLE — Most small-business owners don’t realize this yet, but a mother lode of technology that can free precious cash and manpower is available to them as in no other time in history.

Small firms typically buy basic clerical and accounting software in shrink-wrap boxes and run them on a company computer. The owner, or a harried employee, invariably gets pressed into service as resident tech expert.

But today, they can tap into a swelling portfolio of business applications residing in far-off computer servers. These programs come down from the Internet cloud, sent by a growing army of software companies eager to deliver powerful tools to Web browsers in laptops, netbooks and smartphones. Users pay as they use.

So-called software-as-a-service, or SaaS, has long been available to big companies. Now that computing power has become dirt cheap and Internet usage ubiquitous, software developers are racing to put cutting-edge business apps into the hands of small firms in ways that could give a lift to the economic recovery.

“We’re entering an entirely new paradigm,” says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based supplier of programs that manage customer relations. “It’s fantastic for small business, because software-as-a-service gives them a whole new level of capabilities.”

TECHNOLOGY LIVE: Q&A with Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff

Services such as Speakeasy, Concur Breeze and Avalara have cropped up to manage Internet phone systems, do expense and travel accounting, and handle complex sales-tax payments for small firms. For modest fees, these suppliers assume the burden of keeping programs updated, secure and readily accessible. “This technology allows you to do more with less,” says Bruce Chatterley, CEO of Speakeasy, a Seattle-based supplier of Internet phone systems. “Small business can now go toe-to-toe with big business.”

The trend has grabbed the attention of the tech giants. Microsoft and IBM have begun hustling to prepare a new generation of hosted services, tuned for small businesses and neatly tying into their legacy products. “Big Blue is definitely going small!” declares Sean Poulley, IBM’s vice president of cloud collaboration.

And Google recently has become hyper-focused on this emerging market. The search giant is stepping up efforts to position its Web-delivered e-mail and clerical applications as the hub of some of the hottest new tools crafted specifically to help small firms.

“There is big money in this,” says Christopher Vander Mey, senior product manager for Google’s business line of products. “We want to give business a choice, and we strongly believe many will choose us.”

Growth in spending on cloud services by U.S. companies with 100 or fewer employees is projected to grow from $2.4 billion this year to $4.1 billion in 2013, according to research firm IDC. But that could turn out to be conservative if awareness spreads. “We’re at an acceleration point,” says Benioff. “We’re seeing real innovation and real growth, and it’s all coming from cloud computing.”

Sleeping better

Testimonials from early adopters bear out the benefit claims made by SaaS proponents. Take Glen Smith, CEO of Commercial Retrofitters & Recyclers, an energy auditing and recycling company in Upper Marlboro, Md. Smith knows firsthand how hosted services can minimize disruptions, should a company computer get lost or stolen.

In early 2009, Smith moved all his customer and banking records into online systems supplied by Salesforce.com, FinancialForce.com and Intuit’s QuickBooks Online. That allowed him to shed the Windows PC server he kept on the premises to store this invaluable data.

One weekend last month, thieves broke in and stole eight desktop PCs used by his office staff, along with a truckload of recycled tech equipment. Smith was unruffled. “On Monday, we went out and bought new computers, plugged them in, and we were back up and running by noon,” he says. “We didn’t have to re-create anything.”

At Executive Envelope, a Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-based manufacturer of brochures and placards, office manager Claudia Brake was in dire need of a more efficient, accurate way to keep track of continually morphing sales-tax rates and rules imposed by the half-dozen states where Executive Envelope sells its products. The company accountant simply could not keep up. Errors — and audits — resulted.

By turning that tedious, detailed task over to Avalara’s specialized systems, the company saves eight to 10 employee hours a week, or $36,000 annually. More important, its exposure to audits has been reduced, allowing Brake to sleep better. “It not only makes my life easier, it allows me to focus on more valuable areas of our business,” she says.

Similarly, New Age Industrial, a Norton, Kan., aluminum equipment maker, recently turned to Concur Breeze to handle its business expense reports. Employees attending a recent tradeshow used their laptops to access the Concur Breeze website and make entries to expense reports while on the road. Back in Norton, accounting controller Missy Amlong could instantly review those entries.

“We went from seeing expense detail once a month to seeing detail in nearly real time,” Amlong says. She now spends 30% to 40% less time processing expenses.

Blended services

At Google, the proliferation of such services played into the hands of the team behind Google Apps Premier Edition, the suite of Web-based e-mail, calendar and clerical programs the company sells to businesses for $50 a year per employee.

On March 9, the search giant rolled out Google Apps Marketplace. Businesses can choose from more than 90 hosted services that tie into Google Apps. To appear in the marketplace, software companies pay a $100 registration fee and agree to route access to their service through Google Apps. They also pay Google a 20% cut of any revenue generated through the marketplace. More than 1 million Google Apps users are now using services supplied by Google’s marketplace partners.

“The idea was simple,” says Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google business software. “Every day, there was a new vendor offering unique services in the cloud. We wanted to give small business a centralized point where they could see offerings, read reviews and install the offerings.”

Tom Hippensteel, vice president of LiquidConcrete, a Seattle-based maker of coatings for concrete and steel structures, has come to rely on Google Apps and its marketplace partner, SmartSheet, a supplier of project management software. Hippensteel often collaborates on new coating formulas and customer contracts with multiple employees in the field. Members of a work group might be simultaneously working in one or both of the cloud programs using Apple Macs, Windows PCs or Apple iPhones.

“When we’re done, we can hit save, and everybody has the current version,” says Hippensteel. “That solves the problem of multiple versions of a file flying around in e-mail attachments.”

IBM is making a similar bet that small firms will gravitate to a mix of basic and specialized hosted services seamlessly blended by a tech giant doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting. This spring, it announced partnerships with UPS, Skype, Salesforce.com and Silanis, an e-signature authentication maker. Subscribers to LotusLive, IBM’s hosted e-mail and document-sharing service, can now ship packages, make phone calls, manage customer records and authenticate documents directly from LotusLive. IBM intends to add more partners.

“This cloud-delivery model allows IBM to serve a whole new class of customers that we’ve not been able to reach easily before,” says IBM’s Poulley. “Now more than ever, you’re going to see us adapting to the needs of small business.”

‘Save to Web’

Microsoft, meanwhile, is attempting to ease its small-business patrons into the Internet cloud. It plans to roll out Office 2010, the latest iteration of the world’s most widely used suite of clerical programs, sometime in June.

A small-business owner will be able to buy Office 2010 for $199 embedded in a new Windows PC, or $279 in a shrink-wrapped box. A key new function: When closing a Word document, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint slide presentation, the user will be able to navigate to “Save & Send,” then “Save to Web.”

The file will then sail off to SkyDrive, a free file-storage service residing on Microsoft’s cloud servers. SkyDrive is available to anyone who signs up for a free Windows Live or Hotmail account. Later, the user can access the SkyDrive file and work on it from any Web browser on any computing device.

To do this, you must log onto Windows Live and use Office Web Apps, a lightweight, browser-enabled version of Office that Microsoft is preparing to make free to everyone; it plans to roll out Office Web Apps at the same time as, or slightly before, Office 2010.

“They want to sell Office 2010, but they also want to respond to the fact that people want to do stuff online,” says Matt Rosoff, senior analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft.

Unlike Google and IBM, Microsoft is not letting any partners tie their apps directly into its breadwinner product. But, in the brave new world of cloud computing, that hasn’t stopped Central Desktop, a Pasadena, Calif.-based start-up, from hosting a service that enables users of Office 2003 and Office 2007 to collaborate in the Internet cloud.

For $25 per month, per user, Central Desktop lets you save older Office files on its servers, where multiple users can simultaneously access the same file. There’s no need to pay for Office 2010, or make the switch to Google Apps, says Central’s co-founder and CEO Isaac Garcia.

“We know small business wants to consume product via software-as-a-service,” he says. “It’s affordable, flexible and you pay as you go, instead of paying a large up-front licensing fee.”

www.usatoday.com

As readers of this blog know, hundreds of leading software, SaaS and cloud computing companies are happily and profitably using Intacct’s cloud-based financial management and accounting applications.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, we started to notice our Software industry customers provisioning more users in large numbers and subscribing to more modules too – which I took to mean they were coming out of the recession. This trend only accelerated in the first quarter of 2010 – leading to Intacct putting together record quarters for both Q4 and Q1, dramatically exceeding our plan.

Around the first of the year I was talking about this trend with MR Rangaswami, the CEO of Sandhill group, who is an old friend from past lives at Oracle. We thought it would be interesting to put together a formal research project to understand whether the resurgence Intacct has seen in its software customers is more broadly true in the Software industry as a whole.

This led to a new piece of primary research that Sandhill will release next week based on surveys and interviews with more than 100 Software CEO’s and CFOs. The punchline is that unlike many industries that are still reeling from the recession, the software industry, led by the adoption of cloud computing, is roaring back. Across the board, the software execs that Sandhill interviewed are optimistic about the industry as a whole and downright enthusiastic about the prospects for their own firms.

The vast majority of the more than 100 software CEOs and CFOs interviewed indicated their company’s business has or will soon return to pre-recession levels, are ramping up hiring and are planning for significant growth in 2010. This is great news for the California economy.

The adoption of cloud computing / Software as a Service is clearly a major growth driver, and the execs are seeing a rapid shift to subscription-based business models. What was also interesting to me is the primary metrics the execs are using to measure their business have also radically shifted – to focus much more on managing recurring revenue, customer acquisition and churn.

Sandhill is presenting a webcast with the full results on Thursday, April 29, at 11:00am PT. MR will go through the survey highlights and then moderate a panel of CEOs and CFOs from Adaptive Planning, BigMachines, Intacct and Zuora, who will react to the results and talk about what they are seeing in their own businesses.

It’s not often you get to review CEO and CFO forecasts from more than 100 leading software companies plus get to ask business planning questions live with four of the leaders – so I encourage you to register for the webcast. Everyone who attends will also get a copy of the rather hefty white paper detailing the findings.

If you are a software, SaaS or cloud computing exec, I expect this be well worth be an hour of your time. Register here – the link will take you to a webex page where you can register for the event.

Full Source

Our personal lives are increasingly becoming self-service. When was the last time you called or visited a travel agent to book a flight versus self-booking on Orbitz, Expedia, or an airline’s website? When you get to the airport, do you stand in line to check in at the counter or do you use the self-service kiosk? Do you bank online and use ATMs or do you stand in line at a branch location to speak with a teller? Are there more self-checkout lanes at your local Home Depot or supermarket than staffed ones?

According to IHL Group, transactions at self-service kiosks by North American consumers were expected to surpass $775 billion in 2009 and exceed $1.6 trillion by 2013. “Most consumers have adapted to self-service as a way of life,” Lee Holman, Lead Retail Analyst of the IHL Group, says in the press release. “The current recession is actually increasing the acceptance of the technologies, as they are a hedge against increasing labor expenses during a tough economic climate. They allow companies to schedule their workforce for high-volume periods without sacrificing service during non-peak times.”

Last week, I received an email from a software vendor that is planning to launch self-service transportation management solutions. He asked if ARC had come up with a name for this emerging class of software solutions. I pointed him to some of the writing that we have done in this area: “An App Store for Logistics Software” and “TMS for iPhone: There’s an App for That!” and “Software for the Masses: The iPhone, Crowdsourcing, and Logistics.”

The term “app” seems to have significant mindshare in the market for these types of self-service software solutions, due in part to the immense popularity of Apple’s iPhone and it’s “There’s An App for That” marketing campaigns. Salesforce.com’s “AppExchange” has also been influential.

Another data point: LeanLogistics, an ARC client, launched a “Do-It-Yourself Procurement in the Cloud” solution earlier this year that it calls a “Web App.”

I view this trend as the next evolution of software-as-a-service (SaaS). So, why not keep this term and simply extend it: Software-as-a-(Self)-Service.

It has taken us years to educate the market about SaaS, and there are still many folks out there who still don’t know what it means (see “More Questions About Software-as-a-Service”). Better to build off an existing foundation than starting from scratch. And Software-as-a-(Self)-Service is self-explanatory, which makes life easier for marketers.

SaaS was supposed to help logistics software vendors penetrate the small and midsize market. But the early adopters have mostly been large companies because vendors continued to target this segment. Simply put, the cost of selling to small companies is the same as selling to large ones, but large companies provide significantly more revenue. Software-as-a-(Self)-Service is a renewed attempt at reaching all of those companies using spreadsheets and fax machines to manage their transportation operations in a more cost-effective manner.

Will it work?

It’s too soon to tell, but success is dependent on several factors, including:

* A vendor’s ability to significantly reduce cost-of-sales. Using social media for lead generation and credit cards/PayPal for payment are some approaches.
* Having a solution that is simple to download, configure, and use. This may require vendors to re-architect their solutions. Using online videos for training and live chat for support services will also be required.
* The solution has to deliver value. Sounds obvious, but in their quest to make a solution that is simple to download and configure, a vendor may end up with a solution that is relatively useless.
* The business model has to be profitable. This one is linked to the first point, and since price points are relatively low, making money means bringing thousands and thousands of customers on board as quickly as possible.

Regarding the last point, traditional TMS vendors (and even some 3PLs) often tell me that they can’t believe certain SaaS vendors are making money. From their perspective, there’s no way SaaS vendors can operate profitably at the prices they are offering. SaaS vendors respond by saying that traditional software vendors just don’t understand the SaaS business model and their economies of scale.

After a webcast I participated in recently, where I talked about software-as-a-service TMS, I received an email from a consultant friend who is extremely knowledgeable about transportation management systems, having implemented countless systems over the past 20 years or so. Here is part of what he wrote: “I moved over a few years ago [from using a traditional TMS to SaaS] and still do not believe that most ‘old’ TMS hands get that SaaS is, so to speak, a shift in the cost curve, not a movement along it [emphasis mine]. In a few years time I think people will wonder why anyone went with a non-SaaS TMS after about 2007 or even 2005.”

Software-as-a-(Self)-Service represents yet another potential shift in the cost curve. And in the time-to-value curve too.

Stay tuned.

Source

PivotLink, the leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions delivered via Software as a Service (SaaS), today announced that the company will be honored among the OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies at the AlwaysOn OnDemand 2010 Conference April 19 – 21, 2010 at HP’s worldwide headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.

AlwaysOn will recognize the OnDemand 100 winners for “disrupting the established enterprise and pioneering cloud computing and SaaS.” PivotLink salutes partners such as Appirio (overall winner), Boomi, Host Analytics, Hubspan and Marketo for their achievements as fellow OnDemand 100 winners.

PivotLink CEO Quentin Gallivan will present in two OnDemand sessions, where he’ll describe the shift to SaaS-based collaborative dashboards and ad-hoc reports that overcome the cost and complexity of on-premise BI solutions:

* Tuesday, April 20th at 2:15 p.m. – CEO Showcase session
* Wednesday, April 21st at 9:15 a.m. – SaaS Remakes the Enterprise: Gallivan will join a panel of CEOs from Mimeo, EDGAR Online and EasyAsk to discuss applications that are thriving in the Cloud and answering every need for the enterprise. Attendees will learn how these entrepreneurs are conquering vertical markets with new on-demand software and business processes. The session will be moderated by Ted Smith, partner, Union Square Advisors.

“As the digital information created by businesses continues to explode at astronomical rates, the need to store, manage, and share this information is becoming extremely challenging,” says Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “By providing innovative technologies that help enterprises better compete in this new era of information complexity, the OnDemand 100 represent some of the highest growth opportunities in the private company marketplace.”

Gallivan added, “We are honored to be recognized as a Cloud and SaaS innovator in the company of PivotLink partners who share our commitment to putting BI in the hands of all business users. After decades of on-premise vendors limiting BI to a privileged few, we are thrilled to be leading the SaaS BI market by helping enterprise customers finally reap value from these systems.”

According to AlwaysOn, “This year’s OnDemand 100 companies are leaders amongst their peers and developing game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. Companies were selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.” For a list of winners, visit http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/34759.

The OnDemand 100 award is the latest in a growing list of industry accolades fueling PivotLink’s momentum. The company was named a 2010 CODiE Award finalist in the “Best Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management Solution” category; a Business Intelligence “Company to Watch” by InformationWeek Business Technology Network’s Intelligent Enterprise; the “100 Coolest Cloud Computing Products” and top 20 productivity vendors for 2010 from Everything Channel’s CRN; JMP Securities’ “Hot 100: The Best Privately Held Software Companies” (2008 and 2009); and four consecutive years among the top BI providers in Consumer Goods Technology magazine.

Source: earthtimes.org

Entrepreneurs are building significant Software-as-a-Service businesses without outside capital.

I got into numerous arguments with people recently when I insisted that you can build sizable companies by bootstrapping (See “Why B-Schools Set Up Entrepreneurs To Fail“). Well, here are some Software-as-a-Service ventures that are steadily gaining critical mass. Many of them will create enormous fortunes for the entrepreneurs who founded them. I hope the stupid myth can be erased ASAP.

On Sept. 10, 2001, data analytics company Medallia pitched to its first customer, a top five hotel company, as a pilot customer. Then came Sept. 11. Much to Medallia’s surprise, the hotel called back on Sept. 12 and said it would like to move forward with Medallia’s services After six months the hotel replaced its traditional search system with Medallia, a platform that uses SaaS and Web-based technology to collect customer intelligence at every point of contact, allowing companies to measure customer sentiment accurately. The platform delivers real-time feedback and prompts employees to act on that feedback continuously.

More than 50,000 businesses and business units in more than 100 countries use Medallia, which currently targets the hospitality, retail, financial services, health care, call center, e-commerce and other B2B and B2C tech sectors. Customers include Fidelity, Four Seasons, American Express ( AXP – news – people ), Hilton, Hyatt, eBay ( EBAY – news – people ) and Sephora, among others. Eighty percent of top global hotel companies are Medallia customers. Entirely bootstrapped, the company has been profitable almost since inception and has grown rapidly year over year. It marked its seventh straight year of growth in 2009, when revenue topped $20 million. (Read more in Deal Radar 2010: Medallia.)

Another company, Krawler, created Deskera, an on-demand enterprise application suite that offers a full suite of products aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. Applications include customer relationship management, project management, accounting and human resource management systems. In 2009 Krawler generated $5 million in revenues and was profitable. The company is currently completely self-funded but is open to raising money from VCs now. If and when it does raise money, it will do so at a high valuation. (Read more in Deal Radar 2010: Krawler.)

Oh, and did I tell you about college bootstrapping buddies Siamak Taghaddos and David Hauser? They met at Babson College and went on to start Grasshopper, a company that created a virtual PBX system that lets small companies present a more professional front.

“It is a capability [that lets] a one- to five-person team of entrepreneurs sound like a big company,” Taghaddos says. “They can work remotely and have a phone number regardless of where they are working from. If you and I wanted to start a company right now and we did not have a physical office or $10,000 to buy a phone system, we could then just sign up with Grasshopper to get phone numbers with multiple extensions. That would let us start a company from wherever we are and let all phone calls be forwarded to your home office or my cellphone.”

With about 50 full-time employees and another 50 part-time folks, Grasshopper generated $10 million in revenue in 2009. The company has big plans, bigger ambitions, and I have no doubt it will continue to succeed. (Read more on the Grasshopper founders’ entrepreneurial journey.)

And if you ask Vlad Shmunis, CEO of RingCentral, a competitor of Grasshopper, he will tell you a bootstrapping story as well. “The one thing we did right was we always looked at net/net,” Shmunis says. “Customers were by and large happy and recommended it to their friends. We were always growing, and we hung onto that. It came down to staying power. We ran this out of a 1,000-square-foot office with 10 people. It was very light but effective. We kept building and building. I had some money to keep it going, and that is what I chose to do. Our product shipped very late 2002, so we had 300 customers in 2003. When we closed our VC round we had 20,000 customers in 2006. That was our first round of funding ever.” (Read more on Shmunis’ bootstrapping journey.)

Entrepreneurs, there is much to learn from the tactics and strategies of these savvy bootstrappers. They have successfully navigated the challenges of early-stage entrepreneurship without access to capital. In these days of tight credit and tight equity, their stories may give you useful ideas to navigate your own entrepreneurial journeys. Good luck!

Source: www.forbes.com