For example th ... Read More »

Q:  When should a company use software as a service (per user/per month with hosted hardware and software)?

A:  Whenever possible.

True story.  Yesterday in St. Louis we had terrible storms and a tornado warning for downtown (very rare here).  I was in the middle of a demo and ended up huddled in an interior hallway with the CIO talking about this very subject while we waiting for whatever would happen.

It was hard for them (very old company) to make the transition to SaaS but he knows that they must.  He explained that resources were limited and no one considered it a career path to support someone else's software.  The support costs are very high as vendors have to travel on-site and the support is slow.  Then there i ... Read More »

With the economy struggling and companies tightening their belts we are starting to see more and more resumes of good project managers on the street.

Having been in the project management web-based SaaS software field for 10 years this seems like the 2nd time we have been through these challenging economic times.  The good news for our company is in down times our software sales actually increase as companies invest in systems to automate and replace people.  The sad part is knowing that is taking place and good people will be looking for work.

Well since we have no control over the Federal Reserve the one thing I can offer is a way to decipher the job postings they find so they know the "truth in advertising" behind ... Read More »

I was recently reading Phil Wainewright's excellent blog on SaaS Applications on demand where he wrote that SaaS vendors like VCSonline.com need to use scalable SaaS services and architecture themselves, or die.  

Well, I am here to attest that when it comes to infrastructure, we are eating our own dog food, and loving it!  As for Phil's second point of building SaaS software on SaaS software, we see that as a medium to longer term trend but the more immediate need is a hybrid deployment model between open source and on-demand.

I believe SaaS is going to see dramatic growth based on our many CIO contacts and the over 300% increase in SaaS customers we have seen in the last 6 months.  That said ... Read More »

SEATTLE - Recently the InfoWorld published their list of "Tech's all-time top 25 flops".  When the bodies were counted, the worst software flop of all time went to Vista.  There to accept the InfoWorld Golden Floppy award was Microsoft's very own Bill Gates, who gave all the credit to Microsoft Project EPM Server 2007. 

"With Vista the slogan right from the start was 'we brought the personal computer into this world, and we can take it out.'" stated Gates fighting back tears during his acceptance speech.  "When it comes to project management we couldn't find our way out of an empty room but we couldn't take Vista's failure for granted.  We looked at ... Read More »

I was asked recently in a networking event to talk about the hardest and the easiest challenges we faced starting VCSonline.com 10 years ago this summer.  The question caught me a little off guard and I starting thinking back to those early days (queue stereotypical harp music soap operas use!).

Back in 1998 I had a lot more hair up top and lot less wrinkles around my eyes.  What we lacked in startup funding, customers, and employees we more then made up in hope, desire, and pure potential.  There was no doubt we would set the world on fire.  It was a magical time of creative ingenuity.  The web-based software was an embarrassment by today's standards but back then anything data driven over the web that helped teams manage projects and report to management got ... Read More »

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively new concept in software delivery and one poised to change project management delivery in the immediate future. Instead of buying a server, buying server software, configuring said software, and keeping up with maintenance you simply pay a software service provider a monthly fee to deliver the benefit of the software over the Internet.

The advantages of this approach are:

• No large capital outlay (servers, enterprise software)
   
• No resource management issues (training staff to install and support software)
   
• No footprint on existing hardware (no software to install on desktops and no storage issues)
   
• Pay as y ... Read More »
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CHICAGO – While blogs and discussion boards were filling up with complaints of the availability of their 37Signals Basecamp accounts the management team at 37Signals launched a publicity campaign to head of the criticisms by touting the vaulted "six 9’s" availability of their book Getting Real.
 

"Sure we have a few days when the application is unavailable" said 37Signals and Basecamp CEO Stan Wilson "but you have to look at the big picture.  We also sell millions of copies of Getting Real which is available 99.999999% of the time!  Accept for the time we couldn't find it when someone ... Read More »