On the day that the new 3G iPhone finally launches in the UK, I thought it would be fun to show that we have got CODA 2go running not just on an iPhone (see previous post) but also now on a Blackberry.

Here you can see a view of a customer account, and then the menu of actions available to the me:

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Following on from our post on CODA 2go and Google Apps integration, one of the opportunities I’m excited about is taking the ability to securely pull and push data from force.com into a Google Gadget and combine that with the ability to easily push Gadgets into the iGoogle Portal. 

The result would be an already widely used and accepted ‘home page’ that could also include key metrics and reports from back office systems.   Here’s an example of key financial information pushed to iGoogle via Gadgets with data sourced from CODA 2go on force.com .  This is all because we’ll have access to data in a ‘mash-up enabled’ environment.  Exciting stuff!

Following the recent launch of the Salesforce and Google Apps offerings, we have prototyped our own CODA 2go-specific Google Apps integration! This has been built using a Google Gadget, Apex code and Visualforce and the result has got us and everyone we demonstrated it to at Dreamforce very excited about the possibilities this proof of concept opens up.

Our experience of producing finance software over decades is that accountants love manipulating transactions in spreadsheets! The success of our on-premise CODA-XL product (which extends Microsoft Excel) has been outstanding, with virtually all customer organisations adopting it enthusiastically. Now in the on-demand world we have produced an equivalent solution that uses Google Spreadsheets and Force.com.

The initial prototype can be used to perform a Cost Allocation over extracted transaction details from the CODA 2go product. The user can then apportion new values by editing the cells used by formulas in the spreadsheet; we then post back the results in the form of a journal back into CODA 2go from within the Google Spreadsheet user interface via a Visualforce-powered Google Gadget!

The feedback from prospects, analysts and the guys at Salesforce has proved that this is yet another feature we can offer with CODA 2go that will keep the accountants smiling…

Well, we did it… CODA’s first totally new finance system for around 15 years was unveiled at salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event in London on Wednesday. Jeremy Roche from CODA joined salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff on stage during the keynote to talk about CODA 2go, the first accounting system to be developed on the Force.com platform, and demo the new application.

Demonstrating software live in front of 2500 people is always a risk, and sure enough the first click of a button produced an error message none of us had seen before. Our development team, watching back in Harrogate via the web, told us later their collective hearts stopped for a moment when that happened! However, turns out that that a glitch in the internet connection had taken the web browser off-line momentarily… so Steve Fisher on keyboards just had to refresh the browser and we were off and running.

The audience was certainly ‘wowed’ by the new offering - the CODA stand was mobbed for the rest of the two-day event. As we’d predicted, the salesforce.com community is hungry for a finance system that works seamlessly with their CRM.

We are currently working with beta partners, but when the solution goes on general release in the coming weeks we’re expecting a considerable amount of uptake. Watch this space, as they say!

Just one day now to the official unveiling of CODA 2go, at salesforce.com’s Dreamforce Europe event in London. Apparently registration broke the 2000 barrier some days ago so there will literally be standing room only when CODA’s CEO Jeremy Roche joins salesforce.com’s boss Marc Benioff on stage.

Jeremy will show some highlights of the ‘opportunity to cash’ process of CODA 2go, and discuss the product strategy and detail of pricing and availability. Shortly afterwards there will be a breakout where delegates can see the product in more detail.

We are briefing press all day today and tomorrow, so watch out for coverage around the world. Well know tech blogger Dennis Howlett got a preview last week and was highly positive - see his commentary on US site ZDnet or his own site, Accman pro.

We’ll blog more news over the next few days…

As you’d expect the pros and cons of SaaS continue to be debated, nowhere more than on developer.force.com area of Salesforce’s website

A recent post by their resident commentator Peter Coffee takes up the angle of how challenging it can be to recruit and retain key IT staff (or wetware, to use a nasty piece of jargon he uses…). It’s certainly an interesting and relevant argument when assessing the cost and risk of on-premise versus on-demand software.

In the comments that follow our own Kevin Roberts poses an objection we sometimes hear, around the risks of dependancy on a platform supplier for developers like CODA.

Peter’s response is a fair one, and fits with our own thinking - there might be a small risk, but the advantage of speed to market is a massive one and at least lets you test a product faster and more cheaply than developing your own independent platform. You can always choose to do that later on…

And as Kevin points out on the blog, you have to hope that a million Salesforce.com users can’t all be wrong, can they?

The rise in availability and demand for SaaS solutions might seem a reason for IT staff to be afraid. After all, if major enterprise applications start moving out of the company IT centre and are simply rented over the internet, does the IT team get shrunk down until they just have to keep the internet connection plugged in?

Certainly some IT organizations seem to be resisting the growing interest in SaaS, with claims in 2007 that up to two-thirds of companies were missing out on the potential advantages of a SaaS solution due to the IT department’s reluctance to consider it. Fears over security, lack of control and availability (‘up-time’) are often cited as reasons for not considering an on-demand approach to meeting a corporate challenge.

However, IT professionals may be worrying unnecessarily. Fears over security and availability can be countered by simply looking at the facts, with suppliers like Salesforce.com able to boast impressive figures that would rival most internal IT functions.

So what of the perceived threat to IT jobs?

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