Swisscom Switzerland’s largest telco has chosen Zoho for a six month pilot for its Zoho Business Suite which is now available on their Software-as-a-Service portal Teamnet.
Zoho and Swisscom have teamed up to create a custom version of Zoho Business, with Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook and Meeting now available to its 300,000 business customers. Increasingly, Service Providers are looking to add value on their existing networks and have started to include online applications like Zoho to their portfolio of services. In the past, one would not More»

Labels: saas, Web Apps, zoho

Microsoft’s today unveiled pricing for cloud computing services starting from low as $3 per user per month. For the $3 a user will get access to Microsoft-hosted Exchange and SharePoint. Users who want the complete Microsoft-hosted Business Productivity Online suite — Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online (for instant-messaging and presence) and Office Live Meeting — will be able to subscribe for $15 per user per month. The service is targeted at big companies and growing businesses. Microsoft is moving aggressively to meet the requirements today’s workforce before Google starts chipping More»

Labels: google, Microsoft, online services, saas, Web Apps

The Register is reporting that Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets disappeared today for close to an hour, proving that the world’s largest search engine is a long way from perfecting the art of online business applications. Many businesses paid good money to look at this screen, which appeared from about 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. at least to customers in Silicon Valley.
One such business is MuleSource, which is a Google Apps Premiere customer and pays Google for the use of Docs and Spreadsheets. MuleSource describes the experience as a game of chance. “As businesses look to move their systems More»

Labels: cloud computing, google, Web Apps

Advertising giant WPP has acquired a stake in Yield Software, a service that helps marketers shift their ad spend from traditional media to online advertising, reports MediaPost. The services allows marketers to “optimize” their budgets across various online ad platforms, provides landing page optimization, organic search optimization (SEO) and paid search (SEM).
In February, WPP rival Publicis partnered with Rapt to form Rapt Information Services with the intent of making online ad buying more transparent across various ad platforms. A month later, Rapt was purchased by More»

Labels: Online Advertising, software, Web Apps

Personalized web page startup Pageflakes is running out of cash and is desperately seeking a buyer reports Gigaom. Pageflakes aggregates RSS feeds and widgets in a customizable AJAX-based personal web page.
Pageflakes has around 1.5 million visitors a month and over 200,000 registered users. However that pales in comparison to their closest pure competitor Netvibes. However, the real competitors are Google’s iGoogle, Yahoo’s 360, Microsoft and AOL which too offer personalized web pages. The cost of these services is borne by their core offerings.
However, Pageflakes’s personalized More»

Labels: iGoogle, Microsoft, personalization, Web Apps, Yahoo

The Software as a Service or SaaS market is reportedly growing but is still relatively small. 6% of the software sales in ‘07 was SaaS and this is expected to grow to 15-18% in 5 years - which is still small. This, according to the OpSource Summit. Gartner expects SaaS to grow at 22.1 percent until 2011 for the aggregate enterprise application software markets and predicts that 63 percent of products in the software infrastructure market and 56 percent in the software application market will support Web services.
A panelist at the summit described SaaS as the More»

Labels: Microsoft, web 2.0, Web Apps

I was at the Opsource SaaS Summit today and sat in on a preso from the Lithium SVP, Amy Lewis, who talked about the value of online forums to companies. Some of the key points were as follows.
Why have an online forum:

Forum-ize your product line as part of your Web 2.0 marketing
Forums can be used for customer support as well as for marketing
Building a forum allows you to identify who your super users and because they are passionate, they represent a critical user group, a tribal base that are influencers.
Consumer groundswell can be positive or negative More»

Labels: Social Networking, web 2.0, Web Apps, web marketing

Adobe announced today the launch of AIR and Flex 3 software for creating rich internet applications (RIAs) that can run on the desktop and on most browsers and across operating systems. “The ROI of RIAs is real. A more engaging product visualization experience in eCommerce applications for example, helps customers understand what they are buying, which leads to less online abandonment and increased average order size through cross-sell and up-sell visualization” according to Al Hilwa, Program Director at IDC.
Windows and Mac OS versions of AIR and Flex 3 and their SDKs can be downloaded More»

Labels: RIA, web 2.0, Web Apps

All things SaaS is a growing trend again. According to Accenture, software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is among one of the major trends occurring this year. “Software as a Service (SaaS) is emerging as a strong alternative to traditionally licensed software enabling new business models to buy and use software. Now, software is no longer a product to buy, but itself a service to use to deliver other services.”
This model is not new. Since around the late ’90s and onwards, the ASP or application service provider model of hosted web-based software solutions were all the rage. Of course, Gartner, McKinsey, More»

Labels: Web Apps

The WebGuild’s kickoff event for the new year on The Future of Web Apps was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who attended and to everyone who contributed to making it a success. Many thanks to the speakers: Brad Neuberg, Google Gears; Raju Vegesna, Evangelist, Zoho; Bill Scott, Director of UI Engineering, Netflix; and John Rowell, Chief Technology Officer, OpSource. The video will be available shortly.
more photos!
More»

Labels: web applications, Web Apps