Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘books’ Category

jI just read the book “Software as a Service Inflection Point: Using Cloud Computing to Achieve Business Agility”.

A few quotes and thoughts from the book.

Page xxvii:  According to Rob Markezich, Corporate VP of Microsoft, customers of the  SaaS model have saved anywhere from 10% to 80% on the cost of their infrastructure.

Another point he makes is one  I find often when dealing with providers of service to people with developmental disabilities who are analyzing Therap vs other home grown systems.  Agencies do not know how to calculate their costs of various options.

Melvin Greer wrote:

“The second key element in the cost benefit analysis of SaaS applicatinos is the underestimated people costs associated with running premise-based traditional software applications. … “We don’t know how to estimate our people services, so we chose not to consider them when comparing the costs of WebEx vs the premised-based software alternative”.

While this sounds like an inaccurate, poor way to do cost benefit analyses – we see this quite often. Agencies often don’t factor in costs of their committees and people’s time when analyzing alternatives and in particular developing their own system.

One agency once told us they spent $100,000 on a system when our cost to them would have been about $20,000 per year. I then asked what that $100,000 included – they said it only included checks to outside programmers and upfront equipment. They did not count any of their people time or costs to develop. And they had not factored in future development costs.

He finally made the point that

Another argument for “owning” software has been that even with the higher upfront costs, there is a break-even point where traditional software becomes less expensive than the SaaS subscription model. The analyst from IDC reviewed several SaaS versus traditional software deployments and found that when people resources and cost of upgrades are correctly taken into consideration, this break-even point may never be realized.

We have many users who have told use they are saving significant money by using Therap.  The most questions we get on budget affects is actually from non-users who don’t see the full benefit of the system – in large part because they are not doing the proper full cost analysis.

I would be interested in hearing more stories and examples of how agencies are performing their cost saving analysis.

Happy New Year 2010.

I am back from Barbados. It was nice getting away and spending time with my family. Seeing a Christmas Show with songs like Calypso Christmas and Middle Pon Di Road was both fun and a new experience.

In addition to touch football on the beach and building sandcastles, I also had some time to read a mix of books.

Invictus – I read the original book “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mendela and the Game that Made a Nation” and now plan on seeing the movie. This book was enjoyable reading on many levels from the historical to the strategic thinking behind Nelson Mendela’s approach to the Afrikaner community.

Trunk Music by Michael Connelly- I found this quite a good airplane read if you like detective books. A number of fun plots twists and I think one of his better books.

Beyond the Cloud by Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com. This was an interesting read – and in fact I am considering making a list of which of the 111 points that Marc Benioff mentions apply to Therap as well. Salesforce is the largest software as a service company – and the book lays out many of the benefits of SaaS and cloud computing. However, a number of the stories come off more as self congratulatory and written by their marketing department. I also have significant issues with some of his points – like why you have to hold sales/marketing/training events at fancy hotels or restaurants in order for people to feel comfortable with your service. This just seems like a waste of money to me. I particularly recommend the book for Therap users and potential users who want additional validation that the Software as a Service model is both the present and the future in many sectors.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta. I have long enjoyed Ken Auletta’s writing – and this book continued that experience. The book covered all sorts of issues ranging from how google started to their effect on many industries and competitors. As someone (like most of us) who uses Google in so many ways – from google maps to my new droid to searches and gmail and more – it was interesting to see how they are so tied to searches and advertising. I am often thinking about what I am doing at Therap – and why can’t google or others do what we are doing. But our emphasis on electronic signatures and medicaid compliance and tracking all versions and minimizing time spent in documenting so people can get back to work – these are a fundamentally different approach and structure.

Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe 1520-1536 by James Reston Jr. I don’t recommend this book in case any of you were going to rush out to buy it. I try and periodically read about different periods in history and I hadn’t previously read much about this period. But after several hundred pages of minor skirmashes and battles, and lots of marriages of different kings and queens and princes for political reasons – I was sort of expecting something to happen at the end of the book. Sort of like at the end of Invictus there was a game that the book led up to. I guess this book was just another chapter in history and it led up to whatever happened in 1537 to 1550 , and so forth. There were a couple of interesting strategic issues discussed – but I don’t think that makes it worth reading this book.

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. I am only about 1/3 finished with this book – but there have been some excellent chapters on privacy and security over the internet. The book is written by two lawyers who are directors of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays.

I look forward to continued discussions and dialogs with you in 2010.