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

Small Businesses Get More Using Hosted Technology

Smartbiz recently posted on a study titled The Small Business Transition to Hosted Technology: Cost vs. Benefits. The posts summary: "The bottom line is that SMBs get more bang for their buck—a lot more—when they have someone else run their IT infrastructure." The full 13 page study summary is available for download. Here is an excerpt from the release covering the study:

"The survey consisted of more than 325 SMB senior executives, half with companies that outsource all or part of their IT infrastructure, and half managing IT internally. The vast majority of respondents – more than 97 percent – worked in companies with fewer than 100 employees.

Key findings from the report include the following:

1. The majority of SMBs that outsource (54 percent) spend less than 5 percent of annual revenues on maintaining and upgrading IT infrastructure, while 64 percent of non-hosting companies spend more than 10 percent of revenues on IT
2. Companies that outsource (68 percent) are much more aggressive about using IT assets to engage in e-commerce than companies that manage technology infrastructures internally (29 percent)
3. By more than 85 percent, outsourcers report that their IT organizations play an important role in remaining competitive in their respective industries than those that do not outsource.
4. Outsourcers suffer fewer security incidents and technical failures than their non-hosting counterparts, and they are better positioned to avoid or mitigate downtime risks."

If you're a BlueTie user then you're probably already seeing the benefits of outsourcing IT infrastructure. If you aren't yet a BlueTie customer and are considering SaaS for Email and Calendaring, or any of your IT services, then this article may provide the impetus you need to make the transition or provide valuable information in presenting an effective business case.

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.

Back It Up (Again)

Just a quick follow to my prior post about backing up your Email, Contacts and Files, techdirt had an article just a few days before on this same topic; Maybe You Should Back Up Your Own Email.

Back It Up

Do you worry about losing your email, contacts and files? This is one of the great things about using a hosted solution like BlueTie - the companies that offer these (Saas) software as a service products back them up for you. BlueTie maintains high integrity back ups of all your data and provides you with not only a back up solution but also a disaster recovery solution too.

Now some of you, us, just feel more comfortable having your own copy of your files and email backed up, am I right? This is where some SaaS providers leave you wanting more, but not BlueTie. With BlueTie you can Export your contacts, Download your files and even Save your email folders do disk right from within the application. Or if that seems like a lot of clicking, you can get a disk of all this information sent to you every month with our Archive service.

It's the best of both worlds, Enterprise Quality Backups and Disaster Recovery and a local copy. If you want to find out more about the Archive service or BlueTie in general you can call 1-800-BlueTie.

Why SaaS?

Most SMBs require the same software capabilities as large enterprises but do not have the resources and in-house technical expertise necessary to manage it themselves. A recent study by the Cutter Consortium finds that many businesses are no longer willing to tolerate the long deployment cycles, ongoing administrative hassles, high operating costs and low ROI associated with traditional, on-premise software.

These factors are fueling the adoption of Software as a Service, which Gartner Research expects will grow from five percent of all business software spending in 2005 to 25 percent in 2011. With its current market penetration and expectations for growth, it is apparent that SaaS is asserting its position within the software industry. What SaaS tools are you using now or considering to use?

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!

Looking Ahead: 2007

2006 has been a big year for BlueTie with many product upgrades, rapid growth and the introduction of our BlueTie Free product. 2007 promises to be an even faster-paced year here. Some of the things you'll be seeing in the weeks and months ahead include:

• Major upgrade to our Contacts application (much more detail coming soon)
• Changes to our user interface to enable easy customization of how your BlueTie account looks and functions
• Multiple integration of new business services including the ability to initiate and manage email campaigns with Constant Contact, fax receiving and sending within BlueTie via eFax, the ability to book travel within your calendar via Orbitz and a lot more. Watch for announcements as these and many more business services become available within your BlueTie environment
• Enhanced Outlook integration in BlueTie Pro

As usual, all upgrades to existing products are free to all affected BlueTie users. To put this in perspective, the expected per user cost of upgrading from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 is between $150-250 depending on system configuration!

Here at BlueTie we're excited about the year ahead and a lot of even cooler stuff we can't talk about just yet...

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?