Archive for February, 2009

28
Feb
09

Don Sears: SaaS Startup Failure Leads to Blog Banter

Don Sears: SaaS Startup Failure Leads to Blog Banter

Don provides insightful analysis into the Coghead post mortem that I wrote last week.  He touches on the issues that I had to think about prior to writing that piece, which has generated an astounding amount of traffic.  His point about the decision to put all of Delivered Innovation’s eggs in the Coghead basket is a good one, and thankfully we didn’t wait too long to mitigate that risk by forging a relationship with salesforce.com.  Takeaway – social media creates some interesting lines that you have to think about before you cross them, although hopefully Don realizes that this wasn’t a customer we were talking about here and the nearly 50 other posts on this blog are related to SaaS / PaaS advocacy and trying to forge the right path moving forward for our customers and peers, so the analogy he presents was somewhat fallacious.  Beyond that, I appreciate the feedback.

Michael Topalovich

28
Feb
09

Coghead Roundup: A Collection of Analysis

The death of Coghead triggered a flood of analysis – just about everyone had an opinion on the event, myself included.  After the initial wave of shock and disbelief, a steady stream of insightful post-mortem analysis began to make its way to my NewsGator account.  Now that we have had almost ten days to come to terms with both the events that led to Coghead’s demise as well as the implications on SaaS and PaaS moving forward, I wanted to take this opportunity to present posts that highlight some of the key issues that emerged from the Coghead discussion: Lack of PaaS standards and interoperability (exacerbated by the uncertainty of long-term vendor stability), and PaaS evaluation and selection criteria confusion (including the immaturity of monetization strategies & pricing models).

PaaS Standards and Interoperability Analysis

PaaS Evaluation and Selection Criteria Analysis

Michael Topalovich
Founder and CTO
Delivered Innovation

28
Feb
09

Tim Gray: CFOs See SaaS as Critical and Core to Business Improvement

Tim Gray: CFOs See SaaS as Critical and Core to Business Improvement

It’s always good to know what the folks controlling the checkbooks think of SaaS; it’s even better knowing they’re onboard with the concept.  Tim’s article analyzes research targeted at SaaS adoption in the finance organization, and it provides some interesting nuggets – namely the application of SaaS tools in combating process inefficiencies and managing performance within a risk management context, among others.  This piece focuses on value propositions beyond the tired old TCO / ROI analysis, and we came away with new perspectives on SaaS adoption beyond the realm of sales and HR.

28
Feb
09

Alistair Croll: 7 Questions to Evaluate SaaS

Alistair Croll: 7 Questions to Evaluate SaaS

Alistair presents a very concise set of evaluation criteria for considering SaaS options.  This looks like a good starting point for a more in-depth conversation regarding best practices for choosing on-demand solutions.

21
Feb
09

Clarification from Coghead CEO Paul McNamara: Update to Post Mortem

I appreciate Paul McNamara, CEO of Coghead, reaching out to provide clarification regarding the events that ultimately led to Coghead seeking a buyer for its intellectual property assets.

In the Coghead Post Mortem entry, I wrote that while addressing a group of Coghead partners Paul stated that the company had commitments from existing investors to at least get through 2009.  This was a true statement at the time.  In early December, Coghead investor American Capital shut down their venture arm, which was a critical blow to Coghead.  When I questioned Paul about this because of the short period of time between his statements to partners and the announcement by American Capital, he told me that he had no foreknowledge of the closure when he made the statements about Coghead’s funding situation.

To be fair, the partner meeting was held several weeks prior to the rapid deterioration of the capital markets, and while the communication from Coghead regarding their situation was poor, it would be irresponsible for me to imply that they could have foreseen the rapid fallout in the venture and equity environments and predicted such a Black Swan event.  I will amend the Post Mortem analysis to reflect this, and once again I thank Paul for taking the time to reach out and provide clarification.

Michael Topalovich
Founder and CTO
Delivered Innovation




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