Tioga Venture Blog

Google Chrome secret to beat Microsoft IE

 

It is no secret that over the last two years, Google Chrome has been stealing significant market share from competition, both from Firefox and Internet Explorer. Over the last 2 years, Google Chrome has reached 20% market share.

Why is that? First, and foremost, Google Chrome is a good browser: it is simple and fast and offers most of the functionalities proposed by competition. On top of that, Google marketing machine has been pushing very hard this product over the last 2 years, for instance:

• In 2010, they had a major advertising campaign in the French market with TV advertising, billboards in the metro, banners on major websites …
• On Google search homepage, the advertising to download is constantly present (if you are using a different browser).

Looking at the details with our team, we noticed that one of the most striking features of Chrome is its release cycle. Google releases one major version every other month when Microsoft releases a major version of Internet Explorer every other year. The following graph maps this phenomenon quite well. At the time of its release, internet explorer is roughly at par with chrome in term of performance (here load time to keep it simple), except chrome will then release 2 or 3 major versions in the following 6 months creating a new performance gap. Beyond the capabilities at a given time, the real differentiation of Chrome is the way the development is managed more than an absolute level of performance. In the end the learning is faster and the quality perceived by the consumer is better. Interestingly, Microsoft has mostly stuck to its old ways of doing things releasing a version every two years. This way of working is an asset when working with enterprises as they don't want constant upgrades but not so much when you're addressing the consumer markets. Once again Microsoft is on the enterprise side of the business whereas Google has a consumer side to it.

 

We believe that this applies to many software products, especially targeted at consumers. Fast release cycle end up creating a better product and a real advantage on the market place.

What do you think?

 

Frederic HALLEY

 

Google+: strong growth but the jury is still out

Google+ has been launched a few weeks ago and the numbers of its staggering growth are released weekly, pointing to a much faster growth than facebook or twitter.

 

The comparison is intriguing but mostly meaningless. Google+ is a service released by the most powerful internet company in the world with a user base of close to a 1bn, including hundreds of millions of gmail accounts. At the time of their launch, facebook and twitter were unknown start-ups among hundreds vying for internet users' time. They were targeting only US users or even a subset (top US universities for Facebook). On the contrary, Google has deployed a massive PR and marketing effort to convince its user base to try its service. So far, it has managed to convince 1% or 2% of its users to try Google+. Quite good but not earth shattering.

The real question for Google+ is whether it will be able to cross the chasm or not. Early adopters and geeks tend to love most products launched by Google. At its launch, Google Wave had good reviews from the tech enthusiast. The issue came when real people started trying the service and didn't see the point. As far as Google+ is concerned, I don't think that is the risk. It is a very nice service with a clean and efficient user interface. This time, I don't think there is a real risk of average users not enjoying Google+.

However, for a social network, being good is not enough. It needs to be significantly better than existing solutions (i.e. Facebook) to justify users switching. The staggering figures for Facebook is not so much the number of users (it is still very impressive) but even more the time spent per user. The stickiness is such that in many countries, Facebook is the number one website in term of time spent. The stake for Google is to have people try Google+ but beyond that, have them switch a major part of their digital life (friends, games, photos …). So what we are seeing is just the beginning of the battle between Facebook and Google who are know the major competitors in internet: they are fighting for same advertising dollars and eyeballs time.

Google+ is very good social networks and is a real alternative to Facebook but the fight for time (and not only users) is only starting.

Frederic HALLEY

Mobile Operators hypnotized by Apple

 

I love Mobile Operators: they are some of the richest companies in the corporate world. In a little more than a decade they became behemoth weighting heavily on all economies across continents. Their services, mostly unknown 15 years ago, are used by billions of people. These companies are packed with many smart people who changed the way we work, interact and communicate.

What is very interesting is how these supposedly smart companies got hypnotized by Apple. If you remember the Jungle Book, you'll get the picture the same picture that I have of Kaa with his rolling eyes hypnotizing Mowgli. The whole story of Apple with mobile operators over the last 4 years is really how Apple managed to hypnotize the operators. Before getting to today's news which prompted this post, let's get back a few years ago at the launch of the IPhone. Back in 2007, Apple was a much smaller company producing Mac and IPod. The first version of the IPhone was a good product, different from existing solutions but with many limitations (weak camera, no multi-tasking, short battery life …). The genius of Steve Jobs was to convince Operators across the world to subsidize the handset at an unprecedented level and share part of their revenue. Operators were fine: cool products, very small volume for very high end customers. Not great for the bottom line but good for the branding. Interestingly, they made sure there was no direct competition on the market. In 2007 and most of 2008, Orange France would sell unlimited data plan only if you had an IPhone. When I asked the service agent why I couldn't buy unlimited data plan with Nokia, HTC or any other phone, the answer was approximately: "buy an IPhone". Not surprisingly, mobile browsing statistics were showing back then that IPhone users were using mobile internet much more ; well, having an unlimited data plan vs. paying 1€/Go does play a role too! Clearly, beyond product quality, operators were major players in the success of IPhone.

The IPhone was a success and the shipment went way beyond what the operators had in mind. Momentum set in, consumers got hooked on the products and its apps, as well as to deep subsidy Volume started picking up. What became apparent very quickly to all players in the industry is that the mobile operators were getting disintermediated from the payment value chain. They had created the most successful micro payment scheme with Premium SMS and later with other billing technology (IP Billing, Direct billing…). Of course, all that went away for IPhone users: you put your credit card in ITunes and you're done: no more billing through operators. Operators had kept their haircut on very high on operator billing: between 20% and 40% depending on country and many other factors. Of course, that significant tax limited, and still does, the growth and potential of operators billing. I remember interviewing an executive at a major European operator in 2008 on that topic. He was clear and disillusioned on the matter: yes they understood they were getting disintermediated but no they were not going to do anything as IPhone sales were helping the presentation of quarterly results. That is when I realized the hypnotization factor: the operators understood Apple's strategic objective was to transform them in dumb pipes subsidizing their handset but they wouldn't react and let Apple take the ball and run. I actually think most operators underestimated Apple and thought they were the ones in control. Actually, they were already under the spell and hadn't realized they had lost the customer relationship, the payment, the brand,… In one word, they had lost control.

The collision of news and announcement of the last 2 weeks is fascinating. Orange communicated how happy they were to be the number 2 sellers of IPhone in the world and that they'll want to continue pushing it. I would really challenge that this is good news for Orange. Considering how deeply subsidized the IPhone is, I wonder how long it will take them to break even with a modest increase in monthly ARPU. If you factor in, the added burden on the infrastructure due to mobile data traffic explosion, I really doubt this is good news for Orange's shareholder. Today, the French newspaper Les Echos published a great story on how Apple is ready to launch the sales of simcard and subscription directly via ITunes in partnership Gemalto. The bundled sales of handset with subscription would transform Apple in a MVNO pushing the disintermediation idea to its limit. Mobile Operators can focus on the maintenance of their antennas! The journalist ponders how and if the operators are going to resist. I think it is too late now: the momentum of Apple in mobile phones is amazing. The consumer awareness and demand is great. I am ready to bet that at least one operator per country will go with the new Apple model, forcing all the markets to go in this direction. It is a little late to wake up and realize what has been going on for the last 4 years. By the way, they have one great idea to counter Apple : push Google and Android. I am not sure Google is going to be soft and fuzzy and bow to their traditional ways… The mobile operators were the key winners of the 1995-2005 era, they won't be the winner or the decade to come.

Frederic Halley

Pricing as a science

Pricing is probably one of the most important decisions taken by management. However, pricing decisions are often made in a surprising way. As a very quantitative factor, you would expect management to rely heavily on numbers and data analysis. This is much less the case as would be expected. I learned recently from this major consumer company selling its products through retail chains where the discussions was mostly based on 'gut feeling' between two disagreeing managers. The discussion going along these lines: "I believe a 20% price cut would increase sales", "no 10% should be enough"... Price elasticity and data analysis didn't really appear in the conversation. And this was a Fortune 500 company!

Starting with today's post, we'll explore some framework and examples on pricing and how to improve decision on this most critical point.

The following table highlights, at a high level, some ways of thinking or analyzing pricing.

	B2B	B2C
Small Company	Ad-Hoc pricing	Data analysis Market Research
Big Company	Data Analysis Benchmarking	Industrialized Data analysis

 

Underlying this table and the variations of approaches is data quantity factor. Very simply put, if your company does 5 or 10 deals a year, or in fact anything below ~100, data analysis will not help you much. Deals will vary too much from one another; specific aspects will hide a potential pattern. Big companies in B2B overcome this difficulty with scale and size. Global analysis or country benchmarking allows identifying patterns and validating hypothesis on topic such as discount or cost of sales. In B2C, data are usually available, both in ecommerce channel and in traditional retail and allows diving into more 'traditional' analysis : price elasticity, sales analysis,…

Small companies in B2B rely mostly on empirical elements, combined with competitors' analysis. The 'cost based pricing' method is prevalent in many traditional industries. Defense contractors typically work on 'cost plus' basis where they add a negotiated markup to their cost. This historical way of pricing is now being challenged by the budget crisis and the willingness of many governments to reduce defense spending. 'Cost based pricing' methods with its many shades of grey tend to be somewhat inefficient for a simple reason: they focus on the vendor's problem (the costs) and not the customers' side (the value). Over the last 10 years, we have worked with many B2B startups on pricing. Pricing a new and innovative product or service will always be difficult and include some judgment calls. However a 'scientific', fact based approach, allows finding a good equilibrium: this is what we call 'Value Based Pricing'. The objective of the process is to discover the value that the new product or service will create for the enterprise customer. Of course, this fact finding is a significant effort as buyers will not necessarily disclose to the seller its own ROI analysis. Understanding the value chain from the buyer's perspective is a full project that will typically include two or more of the following activities:

• In-depth interviews with prospective buyers, but clearly not with purchasing departments but with the beneficiaries of the solution. In several instances, we have also find finance people to be useful as they are the ones running or validating the numbers that are prepared by the buying team.

• Competitor analysis is critical. Even if you think that your solution is unique, this is not the way the buyer will see it. They will look at your solution as incremental: incremental vs. what they are currently using or incremental vs. competition. It is never a black or white choice.
• Industry and vertical analysis. The web provides a wealth of information and market data. Understanding in details value chain, cost and margin structure will provide valuable insight into the pricing of your solution.

So, no magic formula but a clear and structured approach to get to the solution. The result of this work is often a range of price that seems acceptable. The final choice will depend very much of what type of industry you are in. If prices are public or easily accessible, it is often a good idea to err on the low side of the range to be safe. In enterprise market and especially in technology, such as enterprise software, we tend to go for the high end of the range:

• It is easier to lower than increase price. In technology, prices go down with time. That is just the way it is (mostly driven by Moore's law and network effect)
• If the price is not public, a direct sales force can adjust the price down with discounts. It needs to be managed carefully at the execution level but it will give more flexibility and less risk of leaving too much money on the table.

This illustrated typically the way we work with technology startups to get to a good price positioning in a simple and practical way.

Next time, we'll look at New Product Pricing and how to set up the price of a new product at its introduction.

Frederic Halley

Browser war : the hidden factor

In its most recent data on the US internet market, Net Applicatins highlighted that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) had gained market share, mostly against Mozilla Firefox. For those following this market, this is a somewhat surprising data. At the same time, the introduction of the ballot screen in the EU has not led to a major drop of market share for IE. Google Chrome has definitely made inroad but it owes its win to massive advertising campaigns across the EU which was synchronized with the appearance of the ballot screen. For those using several of these 3 products, it is difficult to argue that IE (even IE 8) is a  much better product than either Chrome or Firefox latest versions ; IE 8 is a fine product with its plusses and minuses but not a much better product. So why is it that Internet Explorer is retaining a clear leadership in browsing statistics?

 

Of course, one can argue on Microsoft dominance and its management of the OEM channel explains it. Legacy and habits probably play a role too. On the other side, the replacement of IE6 and IE7 by IE8 would definitely help. Microsoft Brand recognition by consumer is good, but which internet user does not know, and trust, Google?  I don’t think these elements explain the numbers we are seeing now.

 

Actually, the best reason for the remarkable stability of the IE market share was probably provided by IBM last week. IBM just decided to switch its browser of choice from IE to Firefox. This, from the company who is a major force behind open source and one of Microsoft’s staunchest competitors, is most surprising! Why not years ago? Firefox has been a better product than IE arguably for most of the last decade and it took IBM 10 years to switch?! If IBM did not / could not do it, you can easily imagine that the vast majority of corporations are still using IE as their default browser. The deep integration of Internet Explorer with most of Microsoft’s enterprise solutions such as SharePoint, and most generally with IT corporate ecosystems, makes it the de facto browser of choice for most companies.

 

What we may be seeing in the browser market data is some of kind of leveling due to the weight of enterprise browsing vs. consumer browsing. The key issue is that Net Applications does not break down browsing stats by enterprise vs. consumer. However, I would not be surprised that IE’s market share in the consumer market being already low and close to equilibrium but dominant (and stable) in the enterprise segment. If this is the case, we could actually see IE’s market share nudge up as IE 9 is released and they gain some traction in the consumer market. Microsoft’s core strength in enterprise will probably allow IE’s market share to be at least stable. Time will tell, but short term, any companies able to provide browsing stats by consumer vs enterprise would have a winning product.

 

Frederic HALLEY

Go East (and South) young man

The following post is the translation of an oped we contributed to the AFDEL (French software vendors association) December newsletter. Although, this article was originally targeted at French software vendors, we believe the idea to be very relevant for most European software vendors.

As the crisis seems to be coming to an end, the key question for businesses is when and where will the recovery happen. The French economy seems to have bottomed out and many experts are predicting a slight growth for the coming quarters. For software publishers, the question is now how to take advantage of it and where to invest.

Historically, many French software vendors have focused their international development in the U.S. and other developed countries. While it is true that the U.S. market is the largest homogeneous market for high technology, it is now mature and saturated. Operational difficulties for medium-sized publishers are real, both for recruiting and managing a good team as well as for the intensity of competition. Growth in Europe is hampered by fragmentation of markets in language, legal framework and competitive levels.  Moreover, the growth rates expected in Europe in 2010 are modest: from -0.5% in Spain to +1.6% in Germany - and +1.5% in France (source: The Economist). The software industry is now mature in these markets and initial equipment has now been replaced by support and maintenance contracts that are themselves under strong price pressure.

However, there is hope in the east and south: in the emerging countries, particularly but not only in the BRICs. It already appears that the way out of the global crisis will mainly be driven by the recovery in consumption and investment in emerging markets. Even in 2009, the GDP of China will grow at 8%, a level never reached by developed countries over the past 20 years. The expected GDP growth rates in 2010 are:

–     China: +8.5%

–     India: +6.3%

–     Brazil: +3.3%

–     Russia: +2.5%

Major software vendors, including US vendors, have already started to conquer these markets. In France, these countries, including China and India, have been considered providers as low cost engineers’ labor pool. The outsourcing of certain functions including IT development remains an important issue but whose success is far from guaranteed. Beyond these possible reductions in development costs, it seems important to consider these countries as markets to conquer in the short term: software is a revenue game more than cost cutting game. This approach is easier for the biggest companies who can simultaneously take on multiple countries leveraging their customers’ and partners’ networks. For medium-sized vendors, human and financial investments will be significant, but the risk profile seems favorable in the current macro-economic environment thus justifying the investment. Among the best practices of expansion in emerging countries developed with our clients, the simplest are often the best:

–     Follow-up customers. Any development in a new market is risky.

Capitalizing on major clients is a must. It is always easier to open a new country with a portfolio of clients in deployment. They will provide the basis for creating a team then a dynamic growth. Their local experience may prove useful in very different cultures. This rule also applies to partners and distributors. The more you go along with your usual ecosystem, the better the chances of success and the lower your risk.

–     Target markets. For a medium –sized software vendor, it is difficult to have the resources to address all these markets. The selection of target countries, or regions when China and India are concerned, is a key issue. The verticals vary considerably from one country to another (Aeronautics and commodities in Russia, manufacturing in China, services in India ...). Economic and demographic characteristics of targeted regions are important points to be included in the analysis process before making a decision.

–     Adapt your business model. While sales cycles are rather shorter in emerging countries, it is often necessary to adjust the original business model. The upfront investment in license are rarer, customers preferred rental or risk-sharing. Working with partners and customers already implanted allow finding the right mix before investing in a more significant deployment.

The expansion in emerging countries is not without risk. In addition to the necessary investments, the challenges of operational execution and focus are always present. The risk is overall higher than a geographical expansion in a European country but the long term potential is incomparable. The economic crisis is in this case an opportunity to redirect investment strategically.

The development of software vendors that will happen through the economic recovery in France will be moderate; on the contrary, the vendors looking for strong growth opportunities should now focus on emerging markets. Many companies are well positioned to target these markets now and be back on the growth path. The opportunities are theirs to seize.

Frederic HALLEY

AFDEL-Tioga : A la conquête des pays émergents

 Dans le cadre de son partenariat avec l'AFDEL, Tioga Venture interviendra sur le sujet des opportunités de croissance dans les pays émergents. A l'heure où la reprise se fait attendre en France comme dans le reste de l'Europe, les opportunités de développement dans les pays émergents (Chine et Inde, mais pas seulement) sont réelles pour les éditeurs français.

Cette conférence, réservée aux membres de l'AFDEL, se tiendra le mercredi 2 décembre à 16H30 dans les locaux de l'AFDEL au 11-17 rue de l'Amiral Hamelin, 75016 Paris.

Mobile monetization

Tuesday, I was attending the Electronic Business Group session on mobility (http://www.ebg.net/mobilite/). Some of the most interesting discussions revolved around the current business models on mobile - ie how do you monetize an audience / can you build and sustain a business on a purely ad-funded business model. On the web, this debate has been mostly settled ; not so much on the mobile. Most interesting point was the consensus among the panelists that mobile advertising market was worth 15M€ euros in France. Knowing that 2/3 of that is advertising done by telemedia to ultimately sell good via SMS premium, that give you a pure advertising market of 5M€...

On the other hand, the SMS premium market is worth a little south of 1bn€. If the web is any indicator, advertising is destined to grow significantly. However, it will take a few years before the SMS premium loses it is place as the best way to monetize on the mobile.

Frederic

Tioga Venture, Strategic Advisor to Pertinence-Intercim Merger

Tioga Venture co-founding partner Frédéric Halley played a key role in Pertinence-Intercim merger, providing strategic consulting services throughout the duration of the negotiations.

The combined company, Intercim LLC, will offer the industry’s most complete enterprise execution solution comprising Intercim’s manufacturing execution software (MES) and Pertinence’s state-of-the-industry manufacturing intelligence capabilities.

“This business merger truly emanates from Intercim’s and Pertinence’s greatest strengths: our mutual focus on customer success,” said Intercim President and CEO, John Todd. “The uniqueness of Pertinence’s causal and proactive analysis solution added to Intercim’s current suite of process planning, MES, emergent process and quality management capabilities fills a vital need for manufacturers of advanced products.”

The combined company will serve European customers from a new division, Intercim Europe, led by former Pertinence CEO, Amelie Faure. “The increases in IT budget allocations for manufacturing systems make this the ideal moment for a global leader to emerge,” said Faure.

“This leader will have to execute deployments for customers in different industries and on different continents, while maintaining unmatched levels of ease of use, quality and return on investment. Intercim is that leader.”

Click here to read the entire press release.

Tioga Venture, Strategic Advisor to AXA Private Equity in Welcome Buyout

Tioga Venture co-founding partner Frédéric Halley played a key role in AXA-Welcome buyout, providing strategic consulting services to AXA Private Equity throughout the duration of the buyout.

"In a management buyout, AXA Private Equity has acquired the majority of the shares of Welcome Real-time, a global provider of payment software for financial institutions and payment networks. The remaining shares were purchased by the current management team.

Sébastien Guillaud, Welcome’s CEO, said, “Our performance has been very good over the past few years, and our biggest and fastest growth is still to come. Having a fresh, new major investor on board is critical during this transition phase. AXA Private Equity is very excited about our potential and will give us all the support we will need to achieve our goal of becoming irresistible to banks everywhere and a standard in the payment industry.”

Welcome has bank customers in 21 countries around the world. Revenues have been growing at 50% per year. The company’s 140 employees are based in Aix-en-Provence, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Paris, London, Milan, Madrid, Miami and Shanghai...."

Click here to read the entire press release.

~ Laura Pauli

ROI is dead

Over the last years, selling software based on ROI has been all the rage. That was probably fallout from the dot com bubble where technology companies went over board. Corporate buyers became more demanding asking for tangible demonstration of value created and references. On the other side of the table, software vendors became increasingly sophisticated in the financial exercise. Some of them developed real mastery of the NPV, IRR and accompanying spreadsheets. And yes, we did push and help our customers go into that direction.

I think this period is over.

Some of the most interesting companies I have looked at recently are not selling ROI per se. They are selling strategic advantage, they are selling differentiation; all that with terrific success in the marketplace. On the other hand, I have been involved with companies focusing on pure ROI sells with limited success. Have customers stopped asking for ROI? Of course not! Buyers will continue to require details on that topic and investment process in corporation will still need one. However, I think it is taking a back seat to other considerations, more strategic in nature. Software vendors will still have to jump through the loop but that cannot be the core of the value proposition. There are probably some good reasons to this evolution : market conditions are much better, specially in high-tech, technology are more mature and have demonstrated value and potential (sometimes in the consumer space) and buyers have become more savvy about buying technology. I am not sure how long this will last, but it is definitely worth taking into account when building a go to market approach.

Frederic Halley

Microsoft and its SaaS Offering

The future of software will leave a major role for SaaS (Software as a Service). That part is clear. All analysts agree on the trend. The debate is rather on the speed of adoption, which part of the market, what kind of application, etc.

Microsoft could not let this trend pass them by and they have obviously been working to bridge the gap with their faster and more nimble competitors (Google, Salesforce, Intuit …). Supposedly one of the cornerstones of their offering is Office Live. As very often with Microsoft, the name is perfectly confusing as Office Live has nothing to do with Office and one could even go so far as to say it is not really compatible with Office!! The service is targeted at small companies offering in a SaaS mode a bundle which is supposed to address all their needs: web hosting, email hosting, shared agendas and working spaces plus a few simple applications. We have been beta testing this since the US launch about 6 months ago. To give a simple appraisal: it has been a major disappointment.

Before getting into more details, Tioga Venture has simple principles for its internal IT: no software inside our walls, more precisely: no server software. Everything we use has to be SaaS. In term of vendors, we are completely agnostic and have used open source, Google, Microsoft. It is really about the value and service we receive.

First, the site is slow. Although performance has improved over the last 6 months, the performance of the site is at par with equivalent services. More importantly (and surprisingly), there is no way to connect or integrate with the application on your PC, no way to synchronize the online agenda with your outlook agenda. Even Yahoo has been offering that possibility for several years. As many people, I manage my agenda in Outlook and sync it with my PocketPC. So not synching with my agenda is just not an option.

The email offered is hotmail / live which is basically a decent webmail service (at least the latest live version) however, it is poorly integrated with the rest of Office Live: you just hop between two different sites. Bottom line, after 6 months of beta testing (for free), we have decided to drop it. To be honest, I am confused with what is the exact target Microsoft is aiming at with this service. The market for web hosting and basic email service is a commodity and Microsoft is late on this market. The least you would expect is that they bring additional value to their offer. And by the way, you can find Office 2007 online in SaaS mode. It is just difficult to find the address…

The good news is that we found a solution to our (simple and classic) problems: sharing agendas, contacts a few other info all while synchronizing with Outlook. And surprise, the solution is proposed by Microsoft! Or rather by its partners. We are migrating to a “Hosted Exchange” service with full SaaS, completely transparent, perfect integration with Outlook—functionalities that cover exactly what we needed. The surprising fact is that this offer is not really publicized by Microsoft. It took me a while to identify it and find the company who could deliver that. There is a cost but it is low and pay-as-you-go. I’ll tell you more after a few months of usage but I am optimistic.

Bottom line, I would not write off Microsoft’s effort in this space yet. However their approach to the market is somewhat puzzling.

~ Frédéric Halley

Microsoft IDEES ~ 1 (successful) Year Later

Last Tuesday (February 13th), Microsoft IDEES celebrated its first year in the French senate. IDEES is a very smart and successful initiative in which Microsoft helps 50 French software startups. They provide some funding but also access to Microsoft resources, both people and technology. Having been involved with several companies that are part of the program, I can confirm that the startups love it.

The program is very interesting for both parties: for Microsoft, it provides great PR. They even had TV advertising on prime time! They look like a cool company supporting the French software industry and help creating jobs in France (mostly high level R&D). They are also building the ecosystem for the future—also very good for their business. All that for a reasonable budget of allegedly less than 1M€. For the companies, it provides useful marketing dollars but also helps them to leverage the right resources within Microsoft (tough from France!). It also provides credibility in the sales process with large account both in France as well as internationally.

On a more political note, it was nice to see some key politicians (Fillon and Santini to name only two) being part of the celebration, even if the organizer was a much reviled US company. The political speeches were reasonably good and pragmatic, i.e.: supporting an initiative that helps French companies grow and become leaders.

For a detail account of the day, check Julien Codorniou’s blog. Julien is doing a great job at running the program.

~ Frédéric Halley

Tioga in the News ~ JDNet on the Etats Généraux de l’ASP 2007

After his participation in the Etats Généraux de l’ASP 2007, Tioga Consultant Thierry Aubert wrote an article for JDNet on his insights from the event.

ASP/SaaS : Une Maturité Croissante, Des Défis Qui Persistent

Le modèle économique de l’ASP/SaaS semble atteindre le niveau de maturité nécessaire pour se développer à grande échelle. Mais un certain nombre de défis restent à surmonter pour les acteurs de ce domaine.

Les États Généraux de l'ASP 2007, un événement majeur organisé par l'ASP Forum, furent une nouvelle occasion pour constater la maturité croissance du modèle économique ASP/SaaS. Au-delà des débats sémantiques sur le nom à privilégier pour ce modèle, force est de constater qu'un certain nombre de défis restent à surmonter pour les acteurs (éditeurs de logiciels, fournisseurs de services, hébergeurs...) souhaitant le mettre en oeuvre...

Cliquez ici pour lire l'histoire entier en français.

NOTE: This letter was also published on La letter de l’ASP. Click here to download.

~ Thierry Aubert

Web 2.0 for Companies: Social Software

Whichever way you look at Web 2.0, it relies on few new (or updated) technologies: blog, wiki, video, etc... and all their combinations to allow people to collaborate in an efficient way. What is interesting is that innovation in this wave is clearly coming from the consumer arena. That is a radical change from most of the previous technology waves: the PC and the web, to name only two, started in the corporate or defense/academic world before benefiting consumers.

A few weeks ago, I argued that Salesforce.com was really the new wave of the enterprise software. I still think that this is the biggest trend of the moment. However, a few small companies are trying to bring the Web 2.0 technologies principle and technologies from consumers to companies. One of the most interesting is Socialtext. It brings together blogs and wiki for collaboration. I really like their pitch and the product demo. In France, the buzz of the moment is on Blue Kiwi. At our anniversary party last Thursday, I cannot remember how many people were discussing them.

The issue all these companies are going to face is user adoption: are people ready to contribute and publish? And do so on a regular basis on top of their 'normal' way of working? In the last 5years, I have run and implemented many different collaborative solutions: open source content management, home made intranet, sharepoint portal, etc... After the initial enthusiasm, the issue is always the same: people get tired of having to 'post', in one form or another, their file to the new system.

Let me propose a solution which does not involve changing anyone's way of working: put a Google appliance on top of your file server. True, you won’t solve all the collaboration issues in a company, but you are solving the number one pain point: finding the right document when you need it. That may be one reason why Microsoft is so focused on enterprise search at the moment...

~ Frédéric Halley