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GOffice – what’s the big deal?

Feb 23, 2007
in On Demand

It is not a surprise that Google officially launched Google Apps Premier which is a bundled package of their hosted offerings for word processing, spreadsheets, email, calendaring, and instant messaging.  I wrote about this in the fall of 2004 when Adam Bosworth joined Google from Microsoft and wrote a lengthy blog post on the web-based [...]

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Small business startup kit for 2007 – mostly free!

Dec 22, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, On Demand

A friend of mine called me the other day to ask for advice on what services (email, voice, apps) he should use to run his business with the caveat being that he wanted to spend as little upfront capital as possible and also have minimal ongoing maintenance headaches.  As I started thinking about his question, [...]

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Is the bar lower for a tech IPO?

Nov 17, 2006
in Investing/Markets, On Demand

I am not sure if you saw the news, but Salary.com recently filed for an IPO to raise up to $50 million. On the book is Thomas Weisel Partners, William Blair, Needham, Pacific Crest, and Wachovia. According to the S-1 filing:Salary.com is a leading provider of on-demand compensation management solutions. Our comprehensive on-demand software applications [...]

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Utility computing for the web and startups

Nov 3, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, On Demand

There is a great BusinessWeek article outlining Amazon’s ambition to be a utility for web businesses.  This reminds me of a conversation I had last month with a founder and former CTO of one our of our prior portfolio companies who said his goal was to have a highly successful SAAS play with 1 operations [...]

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Revolutionary technology with evolutionary implementation

Oct 5, 2006
in Entrepreneurship, On Demand

I was riding on the train this morning and was talking to a friend about one of my fund’s portfolio companies.  She mentioned that the management team had done a great job during a recent sales presentation because instead of going for the "rip and replace" strategy, they went with the "co-exist" philosophy.  Too often, [...]

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Google and enterprise SAAS

Sep 2, 2006
in On Demand

There has been lots of discussion about Google going after Microsoft with a focus on collaborative office tools vs. siloed, desktop-oriented ones.  I can definitely see a need for some of what Google has to offer particularly with the ease of use of unlocking data and analysis and sharing it with others.  All that being [...]

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Citrix Online – a SAAS powerhouse

Aug 23, 2006
in On Demand

Everyone knows that hindsight is 20/20.  Back in 2003 when we were deciding whether or not to sell Expertcity (GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting) to Citrix or continue fighting the fight and attempt to take the company public 1 year later, it was quite a gut-wrenching decision.  Ultimately we decided that the risk/reward ratio to sell at [...]

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Can Microsoft reinvent itself?

Apr 29, 2006
in On Demand, Web/Tech

Microsoft released its third quarter numbers the other day and while revenue growth was strong, the stock got hammered and dropped over 10%.  Why? Microsoft plans on investing for the long term and putting another $2b into the Internet and other new technologies like the XBox.  To sum it up, here is Rick Sherlund, Goldman [...]

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DIY in the Enterprise

Apr 27, 2006
in On Demand, Web/Tech

As I wrote last year, this "web as platform" gospel is starting to spread quickly from consumer to thoughts on the enterprise.  In my mind, what has enabled this enterprise web phenonomenon has been two thoughts – lightweight and simple.  Of course, lightweight and simple equals cheap and fast to implement.  It is quite easy [...]

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Grid 2.0

Mar 23, 2006
in On Demand

The hype cycle for grid computing started many years ago, and today it is mostly relegated to uses in bioinformatics, financial services, and 3d modeling (think crash testing, oil discovery, etc.).  With yesterday’s announcement, Sun is making this grid infrastructure available to anyone, anytime, and on demand at Network.com.  As Jonathan Schwartz points out, consumer [...]

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