Boris Evelson tweeted a fine question yesterday morning, but it’s too easy: how to define Saas? If he’s going to all that trouble, why not also define Saas’s younger siblings: platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service. To be a real hero, though, he has to take on the real pain: how to pronounce “Iaas” and “Paas.”
Saas
Stay agile
Mark Albala witnessed something through a client that helps explain the cloud’s ascent: The client bought a $25,000 product, and got a bill from their technology group of almost $150,000 to install it. The client’s response: “What is this s—-?” They’re now seriously considering SaaS.
He is president of InfoSight Partners. “[SaaS] is not catching on because it’s cheaper. It’s not,” he said. “It’s not catching on because it’s more efficient. It’s not. It’s catching on because companies are tired of dealing with these technology groups.”
SaaS has what many tech groups don’t have: agility. Most large corporations, he says, have embedded, well-defined development processes that take things from conception to production, with lots of people involved for checks and balances.… Read the rest “Stay agile”
Lessons from LucidEra on BI for the mid-market
Here are two tips from LucidEra veterans Ken Rudin and Darren Cunningham about BI in the mid-market: Forget “freemium” — the new term for free service leading to paid service — and be wary of users’ ability to analyze data.
Rudin co-founded the company and in June saw it fold for lack of renewed funding — in spite of what he described as “extremely happy customers” and a rapidly growing base. At the end, Rudin was chief marketing officer and Cunningham was vice president of marketing.
Unlike in sales to enterprises, the mid-market customers LucidEra pitched typically lacked skill in data analysis and had little time to learn.… Read the rest “Lessons from LucidEra on BI for the mid-market”