Software as a Service (SaaS)

SAN MATEO, Calif. — May 20, 2008 — NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N - News), a leading vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites for small and mid-sized businesses and divisions of large companies, today announced the release of NetSuite OneWorld Software Company Edition. This latest offering from NetSuite gives mid-market software companies the ability to run and manage integrated end-to-end software business processes spanning global operations—an industry-leading capability made possible through NetSuite technology that enables its integrated business suite to span the widest range of both front- and back-office applications. This new edition includes all the capabilities of NetSuite OneWorld (announced in April 2008), which enables multi-national companies to run global operations in real-time, and includes features specifically created to automate processes unique to software companies, such as renewals automation, revenue recognition, complex commission management and multi-tier channel management. For more details on NetSuite OneWorld Software Company Edition, please visit www.netsuite.com/software.

Running a software company is challenging due to complex and strict accounting and reporting requirements. To address these challenges, historically, many software companies have purchased multiple applications to run their software business operations: one to manage the sales team; one for commission management; one to manage financial processes such as renewals and revenue recognition, and yet another application for channel management. This fragmented approach typically is costly, can lead to a higher rate of errors in calculating financial results, and can result in less favorable customer experiences, particularly at the time of renewal. Once a company expands, particularly internationally, this mix of more expensive applications is often multiplied many times over, and can leave a company with very limited or delayed visibility into its operations and financial performance, especially across its multi-national operations. The lack of real-time visibility offered by this fragmented approach generally makes it difficult to drill down to local or regional-level information in real-time for timely course corrections.

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The rush of CRM vendors into Web 2.0 functionality took a new turn today with nGenera Corp.’s acquisition of Talisma Corp.

By Barney Beal

nGenera, an Austin, Texas-based maker of Web 2.0 collaboration tools and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, acquired Bellevue, Wash.-based Talisma for an undisclosed sum. Both companies are part of the Oak Investment Partners portfolio.

"The future of innovation is customer co-creation: talking directly to customers, listening to them, learning from them," said a statement by Steve Papermaster, chairman and CEO of nGenera. "We’re taking content and processes from customer interaction software and mashing that with Web 2.0 collaboration tools to help companies discover brilliant new product ideas inspired by their own customers."

Recently, CRM vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft have been adding Web 2.0 or social networking and collaboration tools to their products in an effort to make them more user friendly and adjust to the new ways in which people are interacting with applications. nGenera, whose executive leadership does not come from the CRM establishment, should bring some fresh perspective to the market, according to John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research with the Service and Support Professionals Association. Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, is chairman of the nGenera Innovation Network.

"This industry definitely needs some new blood and new life," Ragsdale said. "They’re coming from the Web 2.0 aspect, and having the author of Wikinomics is a good sign."

Last month, nGenera launched its nGenera Customer product, which combines Web 2.0 collaboration tools like blogs, wikis, tag clouds and analytics with advisory services. It will incorporate Talisma’s Customer Interaction Center suite, a set of customer service applications.

As the market for CRM technology has matured, winning deals relies less on the functionality of the applications and more on integration and cost, Ragsdale said. Some new perspective should help in the evolution of customer service technology — particularly when it comes to bridging the gap between support and development, giving customers a voice in the development of a company’s products.

"Everybody is a platform now," Ragsdale said. "It’s getting really difficult [to purchase technology]. When people wanted a solution, it used to be email or chat, but now no one just does one thing anymore. People wind up buying a suite and using just a piece of it. We’ve been competing in functionality, and what this could possibly do is change the dynamic of conversation into: ‘What are you trying to do for customers, and how can we help you do that?’ "

Talisma was a target of Oak Investment Partners in 2003, when the firm attempted to combine Talisma with Pivotal Software, a midmarket CRM vendor that was ultimately acquired by CDC Software.

Talisma’s customers include Aetna, Canon, Citibank, Dell and Ford.

Web 2.0 firm buys CRM vendor Talisma

Twitter and tweeting are rapidly becoming part of the lexicon, at least among the digerati who have discovered the jouissance of followers and following. Twitter hasn’t unleashed a unique technology, but an inspired broadcast pivot on existing messaging models. As the generation that has grown up texting rather than e-mailing takes over the planet, Twitter and its ilk will go mainstream.

By Dan Farber

With Twitter, you have followers (those who subscribe to your 140-character-limited tweets) and following (those whose tweets you follow). As you can see from the graphic below, Twitter usage comes in all shapes and sizes.

At the top end of the scale, TWiT.tv’s Leo Laporte has the most followers to date, with 32,728 (see Twitterholic for the top Twitterers list), followed by Barack Obama. You’ll note that the digitally savvy Obama (the Obama camp, not the candidate himself) follows practically every follower it has, whereas Leo follows on 427 Twitterers.

The Obama camp is definitely not prolific–only 119 tweets to date to thrill and inform its more than 32,000 followers. Leo is more generous with 895 tweets, but the most energetic and prolific man of Twitter is Robert Scoble.

He follows almost as many people as those who follow him, and has showered his fans with more than 12,000 tweets to date. On Saturday, he scribed 103 tweets to his more than 20,000 followers.

Paying attention to the daily tweets of 20,000 to 30,000 people, even at a maximum of 140-characters per pop, isn’t remotely possible unless you spend your entire day and night in the Twittersphere.

As with Facebook, you can collect thousands of friends and followers but only a small portion will matter. Leo’s ratio of followers to following–32,728 to 427–is a more realistic and practical approach to using Twitter.

Search and filtering applications for Twitter help to reduce the Twitter overflow. FriendFeed and Alert Thingy (a desktop app for FriendFeed) vacuum up Twitter, Flickr and other feeds into a single, uber stream. Summize tracks Twitter conversations in real time.

Others are taking the Twitter concept into new areas. Seesmic has created a video equivalent of Twitter, and Pownce extends the Twitter model to file transfer and possibly music trading.

As a communications medium, Twitter is a self-promotional mechanism, as in the Twitter feed of CNET News headlines, as well as a vehicle for people to share random and often useless data, such as what you had for breakfast. Twitter can get noisy, but essentially it’s an efficient broadcast and sharing conduit. For example, I first learned about the recent earthquake in China and ongoing developments from my Twitter stream.

Twitter is a complement, not a substitute, to blogging (also called "writing"). With its roots in SMS and instant messaging, the 140-character limit forces thought economy, saying more with less.

It’s also having a side impact on blogging, implicitly training writers to write more succinctly, conserving bits even though they are in near infinite supply. A person’s time and attention don’t have infinite supply–getting to the point without rambling is a plus in our data-rich and continuously partial attention world.

One of the potential downsides of Twitter and other short-burst messaging apps is that context can be lost or it is very loosely coupled, which makes connecting the dots more difficult. On the other hand, if you consume a big enough supply, and the most salient, bite-size chunks of data, the bigger picture will come into focus.

The reality is that humans in the early 21st century will be required to process and buffer more discrete, loosely coupled bits of data than in the past of human history. Over the next few decades, more intelligence will seep into the network, filtering the overflowing stream for each of the 7 billion or 8 billion inhabitants of the planet and shaping more meaningful connections.

Observations on Twitterdom | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

Posted by Ben Worthen

Information technology has permanently changed the way that work gets done. But it’s just beginning to help individual workers.

When Bill Gates speaks, business leaders listen

That’s the message Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates imparted to about 115 business leaders at his company’s annual CEO summit this morning. Gates said that IT – and in particular the PC and desktop software – was responsible for the productivity boom in the late 1990s. Since then, the cost of computer equipment, Internet connectivity and just about every other technology – with the notable exception of business software – has gone down. This should open up a wealth of new opportunities for businesses. In particular, it means that if businesses want access to information “it shouldn’t be a budget busting thing to make sure it’s available,” Gates said.

Gates said that the primary beneficiary of these new projects will be the average worker. The dirty little secret of most business software is that it’s designed to help managers track information, not to help individual employees do their jobs. Gates said that the next wave of productivity will come from technology aimed at making information available to workers and helping them communicate.

This being a Microsoft event, Gates trumpeted Microsoft products that he thinks will help achieve his vision. The audience received a lengthy demonstration of Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software. Gates also demonstrated a new touch-sensitive computer screen that he says is a more natural way to navigate through information. (Business may want to wait before investing in it, though: The screen didn’t respond to Gates’s touch for about 15 second, enough time for him to ask if something was wrong with the system a couple of times.)

Incidentally, while Gates has become a pretty good public speaker – albeit still not a natural – his PowerPoint slides are still pretty boring.

Business Technology : Bill Gates: Tech Hasn’t Empowered Workers Enough Yet

Comcast is adding a social dimension to its services through the acquisition of Plaxo, a deal the two companies announced Wednesday afternoon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the purchase price is thought to be in the $150 to $170 range.

By Dan Farber

The acquisition is a big win for Plaxo, whose Pulse social network service, with 1.5 million active monthly users, has been overshadowed by the likes of Facebook and MySpace. It’s a smart move by Comcast, which can enhance the user experience across its 14 million high-speed Internet subscribers, 3 million voice customers, and 24.2 million cable subscribers.

The acquisition is built on a preexisting relationship. In May 2007, Comcast partnered with Plaxo to offer a networked address book to subscribers of its various services. Comcast is Plaxo’s largest customer and partner, with Plaxo hosting all Comcast subscriber e-mail address book accounts.

“The address book and Pulse combined will change the way people navigate through thousands of choices of content,” said Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media. “You could know what shows your friends are watching, what they are downloading or what they are recording on DVR. Plaxo can help us build that vision. It’s less about the Comcast.net portal and more about bringing the social aspects to all media consumption.”

Plaxo’s software could also be applied to Comcast’s tru2Way project, which will allow developers to create applications that run on any set-top boxes.

“Many users on Pulse share Flickr photos with their friends and family. We want to extend that sharing whether they are in front of the TV, on the phone or at the computer,” said Ben Golub, CEO of Plaxo. “Whether you are on Fandango (Comcast’s movie ticket service) or on demand TV, it gets that much better with social graph layered on top.”

Acquiring Plaxo will help Comcast socialize its cable, voice, and Internet services, including FanCast. “FanCast is major initiative in last couple years,” Schwartz said. However, creating a user interface that can make sense out of all the content choices and devices will be even more difficult than creating a universal remote that a mere mortal could program and use.

“We understand that consumers are looking in lots of places for content, and it should be tied into one easy-to-use interface. You can ask it where to get content and it will tell you if it’s on TV, in a theater, on demand, or on FanCast,” Schwartz added. “We are very much innovating in terms of how consumers manage content. With the choices becoming almost infinite, you need better ways to navigate. The key is making it simple for the user. Right now we are in period of time where users could be confused–did they order it on Netflix, did they buy it on iTunes, did a friend buy it, is it loaded on a DVR. We can help create the best possible environment for the consumer.”

Plaxo includes features common features in today’s social networks.

Plaxo will fall under Comcast Interactive Media, which is tasked with growing Comcast’s Internet business. “Pulse features will be turned on in some Comcast properties starting this year, but it is a multi-year strategy as we give the social media experience to all platforms we are on,” Schwartz said.

Comcast could have chosen other routes to gain a social dimension, such as Google’s nascent Friend Connect. “Friend Connect is complementary to Plaxo Pulse. It’s trying to light up the long tail of the Web site. This is about making social media a natural part of the (Comcast) experience,” said John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo.

Comcast goes social with Plaxo acquisition | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com