Blogs

As we enter 2009, there are few predictions you can make with confidence - except the old cliché that ‘everything will change’…

However, one prediction we are confident about is that 2009 will be the year that Cloud Accounting really takes off. By which we mean, starts to gain market awareness, acceptance and share. Why? Well, because:

- a number of key players will be in the market with viable offerings that are proven (or will be through the year). Prominent amongst these will be Sage with SageLive and, of course, CODA with CODA 2go.
- the economic situation will play to the strengths of cloud computing, particularly for SMBs, with low capital requirements and relatively low running costs that can be turned on or off as the client requires.
- the general prominence and acceptance of cloud computing will continue, with Google, Salesforce and Microsoft all pushing forward the agenda with huge investment and new services being launched Read the rest of this entry »

 Dennis Howlett has reviewed the beta of SageLive, the on-demand product that we have all expected for so long from Sage. Targeting microbusinesses, it looks like it will be priced around £10/user/month with your accountant getting access for free. Dennis doesn’t seem overwhelmed on first look, with the main impressive feature being the Blackberry interface… but at least the entry of this major player into the on-demand market is an endorsement of those of us who’ve been investing in the sector for a while now.

Interestingly they are releasing Billing first along with Cash - much the same strategy as we have with CODA 2go. We were a little unsure about that approach at first, but testing it out with users seemed to work ok and this further suggests it was a valid approach. Read the rest of this entry »

 

The full CODA announcement is available here

 

It means that for the first time, customers have a single source for trying, buying and deploying native Force.com applications. Checkout has launched as a pilot program initially with 12 partners and 19 partner applications, and CODA is very pleased to be one of them.

 

The full announcement from salesforce.com is available here

 

vnunet.com has today reported the results of a Gartner poll on SaaS which makes for interesting reading. It reports that the majority of enterprises expect to increase their use of software-as-as-service (SaaS) in the coming months and years. 90% of the enterprises surveyed globally said they plan to maintain or increase SaaS spend.

We certainly believe SaaS provides a new channel for technology innovation and that it will have a big influence on future buying decisions. 2008 has marked a turning point in the SaaS space. We have seen a number of key enterprise-level vendors throwing their hats into the SaaS ring - including CODA ourselves of course. If more strategic business applications are available to organisations as SaaS, then they will take a more strategic approach to it.

SaaS applications must be feature-rich and available cost effectively, or they will not attract a sufficient subscriber base. For adoption to be widespread, standards will be important and integration capabilities vital. SaaS will remain just one option for acquiring business apps, but when the platforms become trusted we could see an increasing proportion of the market move this way over the next few years.

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It’s official! Today we announced completion of the initial CODA 2go beta programme and availability of the 30 day free trial of the Opportunity to Cash module in both the UK and US. Read the press release at http://www.coda2go.com/news

This is a major milestone for us. We have delivered what we first announced just over a year ago, and then unveiled publicly at Dreamforce in May. This makes us the first traditional accounting software vendor to deliver such an advanced service in such a short space of time.

We have begun the process of signing up prospects to the free trial and many are already underway with it. Many more are waiting to take the trial and we will be getting them started over the next week or so.

A special day in the development of CODA 2go and one we are very proud of, but it’s the customers that will be our measure of success, so watch this space…