BlueTie Blog

Integrating SaaS Into Legacy Desktop Software

A recent PC World article outlines a research report from Saugatuck Technology that predicts the increasing complexity of integrating Software as a Service offerings into legacy desktop software.

While there are obviously challenges integrating Web-based software with client-server software, this report is short-sighted. There are three main issues:

1. Integrating two client-server software products is already a huge challenge.
The multi-Billion software and services market for integrating legacy apps exists for good reason. 18 month implementations in enterprise software are not uncommon. The challenge of integrating SaaS applications into client-server applications is not going to add complexity to deployments - it is going to drive businesses to adopt SaaS faster. Further, integrating a SaaS application with a good API/SDK (which most have) is easier than integrating two legacy applications that were not designed for a world of open standards and Web Services API's.

2. There is no such thing as "offline applications" anymore.
Today's enterprises all have multiple offices, remote workers, VPNs, and broadband connections. Corporate users demand anywhere, anytime access. Therefore, it is inaccurate to talk about security of offline applications. The Internet is already the conduit for access to corporate applications. The only question is whether the application itself sits behind the firewall, or in the cloud. Companies that specialize in providing SaaS applications, and have dedicated 24x7 security teams are much more likely to have more sophisticated protection than your average mid-market or enterprise firm.

3. The SaaS vendors will make integration a competitive advantage.
The IT staff at each individual corporation will not have to do the heavy lifting. SaaS companies will increasingly realize that by exposing more and more interface options to a company's data and applications, they will increase the appeal of their own applications. SaaS vendors will work together to develop a single integration between platforms (a la Google and Salesforce.com's rumored partnership), enabling thousands of companies to integrate with a single click.

Every major ISV is racing toward a SaaS offering right now. In the process they will blow open what were previously closed-wall platforms. The smartest ones will make integration extremely easy, and build their businesses in the process.

- David Koretz

Best B2B Transaction Web Site

Last week we won the ad:tech award for Best Business to Business Transaction Web Site for our Featuretisements. If you haven't seen what the Featuretisements are all about you can read about them here and check out a demo of the Travel Featuretisement here.

As you know from our prior posts travel and business search (in partnership with Business.com) are available with BlueTie now. We're working on additional features that will be available in late May.

We believe Featuretisements to be the newest and best way to monetize web-based software and we're exicted that others believe it too.

BlueTie Launches a New Way to Book Travel

Today we, in partnership with Orbitz, launched it's new travel planning feature. With it, you can do flight searches and overlay flights right on top of your personal calendar. You can see if a flight will get you there in time for a meeting or see if there is a sufficient gap for you to leave the meeting and get to the airport before a flight. No more tabbing between your email and the Orbitz site to figure out what flight times will work, it can all be done on one screen in BlueTie. And the ability to just type it in, "Flights from ROC to SFO" for example, is just plain cool.

Another great thing about the travel planning is the way you can sort the hotel results. All the hotels come back in a list, one per line. You can double click on any hotel to get the details; photos, does it have a gym, pool, etc. But what I love about the one per line listing is how easily I can sort and compare prices and stars now. There just isn't a faster or easier way to compare these items that I have seen anywhere else.

There is, of course, an official press release, but if you really want to see how cool it is, just go view the demo via travel.bluetie.com.

Let us know what you think of the new travel planning feature.

Marketing Voices: Free Marketing Podcasts from the Experts

Marketing Voices is a site where you can listen to podcasts on marketing from some of the top experts including Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Regis McKenna and others. There's a lot of information on this site. You can put them in your iPod or MP3 player or burn them on CD and listen on your way to work or while traveling. They also offer printed transcripts.

Naming Your Business, Product or Service

We get asked a lot about where the BlueTie name came from. The story, as I understand it, is that our (then) 19 year old CEO was in a board meeting in 1999 during BlueTie's start-up phase. They were discussing names and one of the older board members looked at David's bright blue tie and said, 'these days you can name a company anything- you could call it BlueTie'. And so they did.

In hindsight, that was a very lucky decision. Anyone trying to create a unique and marketable name for a business or product these days knows it is extremely difficult yet extremely important to your success. The right name is unique, memorable, non-descriptive (more on that in a minute) and available both as a trademark and a web URL. If the names you're looking at don't fit these basic criteria, they won't cut it.

So why can't you use descriptive words for naming? You can and should if you're operating a local business and using your own name in the business name, i.e. Smith and Smith, Attorneys. But If you're selling business email to a global market you wouldn't want to call yourself Business Email, Inc. because you cannot protect a descriptive name via trademarks and you're extremely unlikely to get a web address even close to this name.

This conumdrum is why we see so many start-ups with funny made-up words for names like Squidoo which tell us nothing about their business (Squidoo has something to do with publicizing blogs). They pick a name and hope it's memorable and that they can market it into recognition.

So how do you pick a name? You could use a naming consultancy but that it going to cost you thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars (I kid you not). My advice is to get creative, do some word play and keep the Internet handy to see if your ideas are taken. And be patient- this is something you need to get right. Remember, once you have a web address, that's your storefront to the world and everytime you send an email via BlueTie your customers will be reminded of that address.

Here's two online resources for finding URLs:

Interactively Search for Domains

and to search for Trademarks:

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)

Here's a final tip: Your trademark only has to be unique to your type of business. A company called Lure-It that sells fishing lures could file a trademark even if another company called Lure-It that did business lead generation had the same name. It's not a conflict when there is little likelihood of creating confusion among consumers. In any case, no matter what name you choose, get some legal and marketing advice before you fully commit to it.

Marketing Sherpa Wisdom Report

Marketing Sherpa, the online marketing resource, has just published their 2007 Marketing Sherpa Wisdom Report- it's a free 60 page PDF download. Over 100 marketers from companies large and small share their wisdom, learning experiences and tips for enhancing your online marketing (and if you don't knopw much about online marketing this is a great place to start- sign up for the free Marketing Sherpa newsletter). Even one of these ideas could mean serious new business for your company, so check it out!

Work Anywhere

It's that time of year when all the bloggers post their prediction lists on everything from global warming to the latest tech gadget. We think this is going to be the year of Work Anywhere, a trend that gets predicted every year but has not turned into something that affects small businesses as a whole. Until now.

To have a Work Anywhere business you need to be providing some kind of expert services rather than physical services. If you sell things you can also have a Work Anywhere biz. So why do we think this business model will hit its stride in '07?

Here's a few reasons:

• Bandwidth, wi-fi and EVDO. Its getting harder and harder to be somewhere where you can't connect and connect fast. This is critical to the Work Anywhere model.
• SaaS. Software as a Service is what BlueTie does- we provide you with a communication, collaboration and organization suite you can access anywhere from any computer. In the past year I've logged into my BlueTie account in an Internet cafe in Paris, a hotel room in NYC, in a conference in SF, at my friend's camp in the Adirondacks...and, regardless of where I log in or what machine I'm using, there's all my stuff: email, calendar, people, files. I don't need to be in my office or my home office at all. And I can see my co-workers presence online, IM (with BlueTie Pro), email, etc. I might as well be across the hall.
• A big change in understanding how to motivate people. Best Buy's corporate offices now run on a radical new model: no set hours, no schedules, no required attendance. You have your work goals, your deadlines and your resources; you do the work any way that works for you. Productivity is up 30%. This was not a great leap of faith for their upper management. It started as a grassroots effort. Small workgroups heard about the model and surreptitiously started adopting it. By the time execs realized what was going on, the proponents had data and it was impossible to ignore.
• Timeshifting and placeshifting. This is an extension of the previous bullet. If you're a knowledge worker and you have the resources you need, why should you be constrained to work within a nine to five system that evolved from the need to take advantage of daylight? We've got lightbulbs!

Years ago there was a big buzz about 'virtual businesses'. The problem was that the tools to make these businesses work were in their infancy. Now with ubiquitous access, online resources and mobile communication you can run a business from anywhere, on your own terms.

Liberation 2007: Work Anywhere!

CRN Review: BlueTie Takes On Exchange

Today we received a very favorable review in CRN that focuses on the fact that, unlike many of our competitors, we are a business application, designed to be straightforward to use, easily managed and reliable. One of the great aspects of the review, from our POV, is the positioning of BlueTie as an alternative to Microsoft Exhange, the costly middle market messaging solution from the 10,000 lb gorilla. We set out eight years ago to provide small and medium size businesses with a real alternative to paying for racks of servers, licenses and ongoing service fees to keep those overly complex systems running. Reviews like this validate our vision!

10 ways to drive traffic to your business blog

Chances are if you are reading this blog, you either have a blog for your business or you're thinking about doing one. It's a very hot topic these days and one we avidly follow at BlueTie as we blog here. Getting started with a blog is easy- we use Typepad as our blogging platform and they make it very easy to get set up and start blogging.

Once you've got a blog you're faced with every blogger's dilemma: How do I get people to read this thing? Start by checking out Guy Kawasaki's great post on ten ways to drive traffic to your blog (and read him regularly for a lot of seriously useful business advice).

The keys to blog popularity: Content, content, content, linking. You need to post frequently, at least 3 times per week. Every blog on the Technorati Top 100 has at least 700 postings so volume is important. Next, blog about things your customers are interested in and provide as much value as possible. Help them be more successful and they'll stay loyal. Share your secrets and business intelligence.

Linking. Technorati measures popularity by how many links you have to your site from other relevant sites and how many outgoing links you have to other relevant sites. Note the italics on the word relevant- tons of random links from unrelated sites aren't going to help your search rankings.

Blogging is habit-forming, especially when you start to get interesting comments and links into your site. It's an organic way to connect your business with a community of interest which is always a good business model.

Update: Here's a completely different but very interesting view on what does and doesn't work in blogging from engtech.

Small Business Disaster Recovery

Now that the mild 2006 hurricane season is over small business owners in coastal areas are breathing a collective sigh of relief, knowing that they are safe for a while from Katrina-type disasters. Ironically, this is exactly the time when you should be working on a disaster recovery plan for your business.

Just as sales and marketing are always planning forward (because they know you are only as successful as your next win), disaster recovery plans should be put in place long before the potential for a problem is looming. After all, no one wants to be in the news scrambling for the last sheet of plywood at the Home Depot as the winds start to rise.

Any small business, regardless of location, needs to think about what would happen if you experienced an unexpected disaster. Fire, flooding from a broken sprinkler system, loss of a key employee, theft of intellectual property- these are all potential business-busting scenarios.

The first and easiest step is to secure your data. Wait, you say...we're not a technology business, we don't have data. Wrong. You have customer lists, vendor lists, contracts and proposals in progress, product specs and code, plans and more. This is all data. The first step is to get that data into a format and place that is offsite and accessible by more than one person. Since all of these data examples can be digital, you can store all of them in a BlueTie account using files, contacts and email. With 5GB per user, keeping current versions of your business intelligence and assets in BlueTie is a great back-up in the event of disaster.

One of our favorite customer quotes is from a real estate broker who said the reasons she uses BlueTie include: " If I drop my laptop in a puddle or leave it on the roof of my car, with BlueTie I'm still in business." While we hope she's not speaking from personal experience (!), it is a great point.

Disaster recovery is an important business management responsibility. You don't want years of work destroyed in an instant. The SBA offers a good resource site on the subject as a starting point. The Disaster Recovery Journal also offers links to useful information.

It only a few minutes to lose a business. Isn't it worth spending a few hours planning to avoid a disaster?