Isn’t that something we all promise ourselves that we’ll do – someday? Create that master checklist that guides us through routine tasks such as upgrades.

There are numerous paper  checklists  publishers provide – however the items are often tediously redundant and it seems so 1980′s to be flipping through 15 pages of photocopied instructions.

Today I’m off to upgrade a straightforward MAS 200 system and I’ll be trying  Google Tasks as my checklist generator.

Google Tasks is free – and located in your Gmail account listed on the left side as “tasks”. It’s a decidedly bare bones way to keep a list of items you need to complete.

Before I leave I’ve created a Google Tasks list on my desktop computer. Using software for the iPhone I synchronize the tasks in real time so that I can use them while on site with the client.

If I find that I need more items in my task list — I can add those on my iPhone and they’ll be synchronized back to my desktop list of tasks.

What I hope is that with a little tweaking that I can soon have a set of tasks that become my master implementation guide that also travels with me wherever I have my IPhone or access to the web.

You can easily drag, drop and add items just about anywhere on your Google Task list.

There are also Apps you can download to your iPhone – such as GeeTasks (shown above) which will synchronize your tasks so  you can use your list deep within a server room that gets no cell reception.

Google Tasks

From Intacct SVP of Marketing and Business Development Dan Druker’s Post:

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.

They’ve commissioned a study by Sandhill Group of 100 software company executives after noticing improved new Intacct user (seats) license demand in the fourth quarter of 2009.  The results of  the survey, as well as a copy of the data, will  be unveiled in an April 29 webcast. Follow the link below to register and read Dan’s full post.

Bye Bye Recession – Led by Cloud Computing, Software is Roaring Back

San Mateo, California-based NetSuite reported a quarterly net loss of $6.5 million, or 10 cents per share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $4.5 million, or 7 cents.

Revenue at NetSuite rose 4 percent to $43 million which largely met analyst expectations.

Some interesting items from the call.

• Average revenue per customer is $38,000 – this is up 10%. Lots of talk on the call about moving upstream to bigger customers and away from those smaller ($10,000 and under) deals that tend to churn.
• Net licenses flat – they lost as many as they gained. The claim is that those who were lost were replaced by better (higher revenue) customers.  Lots of talk about how cloud computing is going to slay on-premise computing. And maybe it will. But these earnings don’t show it.  Their customer license growth (flat) is nearly the same as Sage’s recent NA report. Flat customer license growth.
• Netsuite’s vertical specialization is wholesale distribution with services coming up fast bolstered by their Open Air acquisition. Lots and lots of talk about verticalization on the call with very little discussion of which verticals they’d be targeting. Open Air claimed 5,600 customers when they were acquired by NetSuite for $28 million in June 2008.
• OneWorld SRP customers estimated at 50. I’m unsure if this is the same OneWorld roll-out where they’d claimed 38 customers in April 2008 representing a growth of only 12 net new licenses in 1.5 years.  OneWorld is NetSuite’s real-time management and consolidation option for larger companies with multi-national operations. (UPDATE: Re-reading the transcript of the earnings call I think Netsuite is saying that their 50 users represent joint users of OneWorld and Open Air and is not the total OneWorld install).
• According to the call Netsuite is paying 30% commission to VARS who sell their solution. The amount is paid on first year and renewal sales. Only  20%  of their billing is generated from the VAR channel – a number which appeared to be flat year over year. Channel conflict (Netsuite by their own admission is 80% direct) and lack of meaningful services revenue has probably held back most VARS from jumping into a Netsuite partnership.

Comments (Full Disclosure: I am a Sage Business Partner and therefore not independent)

Except for the use of Cloud Computing this seemed like a similar call that Sage or Microsoft could have held.

NetSuite is targeting verticals though they didn’t spend much time saying which ones (I believe it’s wholesale distribution, software companies (same vertical as Intacct) and professional services).

The company is definitely moving away from servicing the low end (seemingly those paying $10,000 or under annually) due to churn. They claim that the users they lost were replaced by better (aka higher paying) licenses.

Recurring commissions are 30% (initial sale and renewal) to the channel. Only 20% of billings are through a channel ( a number which I think is unchanged from prior years).

Interestingly if I read the call right – the flagship (aka high end multi-company consolidation in real time) OneWorld offering ended the year with 50 users. Back in April 2008 when it was unveiled ( http://bit.ly/9Ev49E ) they claimed 38. So that’s a growth of 12 in about a 1.5 year time period. I am not 100% certain this is the same OneWorld flavor since on the call they refer to it was OneWorld SRP (services something or other).

UPDATE: I re-read the call and it looks like NetSuite has a product called OneWorld SRP and the 50 users represents those accounts using both OneWorld and Open World. Personally I find these product names too confusing and similar… but then again isn’t that what ERP has evolved to – using smoke and mirrors to sell…

Going forward Netsuite is changing their internal customer account managers so they each manage less customers. Previously it was a 100:1 ratio and Netsuite sees it moving closer to a 40:1. I think this is probably due to increasing complexity of their deals.

Of those buying the suite – 70% implement CRM.

Nothing I read made me think Netsuite was an opportunity for any but the largest VARS with a heavy vertical tilt who would use Netsuite to complement but not be their complete service offering. This is the same thing that has been on display the last two years at the IT Alliance. The NetSuite partners on stage who tell of their experiences are all using NetSuite as a complement to other service offerings (financing, accounting, mergers, venture capital) and not as a traditional VAR model where they sold software/service plus implementation.

I think cloud computing is still coming and as VARS we’ll have to adapt – though adapting probably means developing a model where the services we offer are not the same ones that the publisher will offer (namely support, training, implementation). Unless we can add some “special sauce” there’s little reason to get back on the treadmill of selling a highly commissioned SaaS offering only to see the commission rug be yanked 10 years down the road when growth in the industry slows (as it will).
Earnings call via Seeking Alpha image via: sfgate

Many of us already do this with services like Google’s Gmail or Salesforce CRM. We don’t own the software or install it on our computer. Instead we rent the usage and access the program from any Internet connected computer.

Yes, this indeed does look a lot like a return to the old days of IBM Mainframes – except in the old days most of us didn’t put mainframe terminals in our homes so we could work or access the mainframe via an iPhone.

Once businesses start using SaaS in far greater numbers  there will be another issue they have to consider.

That issue is the claim that SaaS providers make about their reliability or uptime.

Most providers can be fairly confident in promising 100% — or nearly perfect — uptime.

This is because in reality some of the fine print in the hosing hosting agreements are tilted in the software company’s favor.

Three tricks for artificially making uptime look better than it might be:

• Not counting individual downtime — only networkwide. So if your site isn’t reachable that doesn’t as downtime unless the other users on the system also can’t access the network.
• Not counting scheduled maintenance
• Not counting small amounts of service interruptions

Read full post

After arriving at a client site you find that you’re missing that one CD required to complete a software installation?

In the past I’ve tried creating a master set of CDs and carefully inserted them into a looseleaf binder. The problem? I kept leaving the most important ones behind in the client’s CD tray. Then I’d go to look for it at the next client and the CD that I needed was missing!

I’ve rushed into the office on days that I knew I had to be out on-site with a client and hustled to burn the CD’s that I thought I might need. What I found is this always resulted in the client  having the exact CDs  needed and my early morning dash to the office was for nothing.

Instead I’m going to tell you how you can completely solve the problem of always having every CD at your fingertips without spending any extra time or pre-planning. It’s dirt cheap – and as a plus if a client ever calls to say they can’t find their Crystal Reports Disks (or insert favorite application disk that clients love to lose) – then you can send a copy to the client via your iPhone/BlackBerry or Android device in seconds.The solution that I’ve been using for well over a year now is Sugarsync.

This brilliantly simple solution allows you to synchronize an entire folder (and all subfolders) from your local computer to their servers (aka – the clouds).

What I do to make this work  is immediately take any of the source CDs that I receive in the office and use a common utility like Winzip to make them into one compressed file.

Then on my local computer I have a folder structure such as:

Source Disks\

Then beneath that I may have

\CrystalDisks\Version 8.5

\CrystalDisks\Version 10

Anything that I place into the \Source Disks\ subfolders automatically synchronizes up to Sugarsyncs servers.

Once the files are stored on the Sugarsync servers then I can have access to them either:

• Via the web
• Via the free iPhone application
• Via the free BlackBerry application
• Via the free Android application

The beauty of this system is that it’s ridiculously easy to send a client a complete set of source CDs right from your smartphone.

Here’s an example of how my Sugarsync iPhone application is setup.

By clicking on any of these folders I have access to my entire version library of CDs.

For example — if a client is missing a Crystal 8.5 Disk – I can navigate to the Crystal Disks folder (shown above) within which I have all my relevant Crystal Reports source disks zipped up.

Now to send a copy to a client (all that’s actually sent is a private URL for them to download the file from) I click on the set of disks and am prompted to enter the email address that I would like to send the link to.

I can enter a message to indicate that the files they need are included in the link.

If you aren’t using Sugarsync to store all of your source disks then you’re just working too hard. The cost is $99 per year for 60 GB of storage. Other plans are available here.

Link: Sugarsync