The Future of SaaS, and What Puts ThinkFree Ahead of Google
Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:30:00 -0400
ThinkFree is way cool! I signed up for an account earlier this week, and its web-based spreadsheet, word processor and slide presentation apps work beautifully. TJ Kang, the company's founder, has been developing office productivity software since the 1980s, and it shows.
Founded in 1999. ThinkFree spent its early years as a desktop software company. Its online edition was released in April 2005. Now the LA Library offers it on 2,200 computers across 71 branches, and NHN, a Korean telco with 20 million subscribers, has integrated the product with its email system. In addition, over 250,000 individual users have signed up for accounts.
Unlike Zoho, which offers an amazing breadth of hosted services, ThinkFree focuses on three applications - but makes them available in more forms than you can imagine. Let's count them:
1. The ThinkFree-hosted edition
2. The server edition (for self-hosting by enterprise customers and on-premise hosting by telco and ISP partners)
3. The iPod edition (so that you can travel with your sales presentation, but not your computer)
4. The USB edition (which allows you to edit documents on someone else's computer without leaving any trace of your work after you disconnect)
5. The upcoming premier edition (which allows synchronized online/offline document editing), and
6. The also upcoming SMB edition (which allows companies to create groups for different sets of employees to share different documents).
All of the above offer round trip compatibility with Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint.
But I think what makes ThinkFree really, truly awesome is the company's idea of what SaaS should be like. VP Marketing Jonathan Crow says that one of his most important priorities is DocExchange, a shared repository of user-submitted documents. Because there's more to online collaboration than sharing documents with people you already know. It's also about leveraging and building upon the enormous amount of collective knowledge out there - knowledge that would have been inaccessible without SaaS. SlideShare and Swivel will have to watch out; as DocExchange evolves, ThinkFree users will be able to view public slides/datasets/documents - and reuse them on the spot.
This is as exciting as Amazon's EC2 machine image sharing announcement earlier this year. As Amazon puts it, sharing accelerates community-wide innovation. Not coincidentally, ThinkFree's document viewer runs on EC2, and DocExchange files are stored on S3. (SlideShare is an S3 customer as well.)
Earlier today Dennis Howlett wrote that being a Connector (in the Tipping Point sense) is part of every service provider's job description. Some connections are specific (you could introduce two customers to each other), others are sort of self-organizing (SlideShare making customer A's knowledge accessible to B, C and D through tags, auto-recommendations, etc), and still others are implicit (Freshbooks making aggregated invoice data available to customers within the same industry).
In the future of SaaS, I think, winning vendors will get ahead by being the best Connectors rather than the snazziest technology providers. (Which is why biggest community wins.) ThinkFree is well on its way. Google will most likely catch up. And Zoho; I'd bet on that. 1&1 CEO Andreas Gauger tells eWeek that he hopes to generate more SaaS than hosting revenues within 3-4 years. Could it happen? While he's got a sizable customer base, he's far from being in the Connector business. If I were him, I'd give TJ a call :)
The End of a Year - December 2007 Hosting M&A
Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:55:00 -0400
Some M&A info from the NCC files for December 2007 - Not all inclusive but interesting...
Madrid, Spain - Private equity firms The Carlyle Group and Mercapital acquired Spanish Web hosting and domain registrar Arsys (arsys.net) for about $230 million. 550,000 domains registered, 170,000 customers and 250 employees.
San Francisco, CA - Digital Realty Trust acquired two European data centers; Cressex 1 in London, England 51,000 sq/ft and Naritaweg 52 in Amsterdam, Netherlands - 63,000 sq/ft.
San Mateo, CA - Garnett & Helfrich Capital purchased MTI Europe in a court-supervised auction. MTI offers the managed services, data storage, protection and collocation services.
Montreal, Canada - HostingDiscussion.com acquired and merged with HostingRefuge.com and TalkWebHosts.com
Macomb, IL - McDonough Telephone Cooperative (MDTC) acquiring Infobahn Outfitters a web hosting and web design company.
Suwanee, GA — Quality Technology Services, a provider of data center and managed services, acquired the customer base of First National Technology Solutions in Kansas City. QualityTech will boost its annual revenues over $100 million with the deal.
Lancashire UK - Red Fox Hosting acquired AGUK Hosting, managed and exchange hosting services
Herndon, VA - SWsoft acquired WebHost Automation Ltd. (Bristol, U.K.) maker of the Helm control panel and billing software for Windows - 1.5 million worldwide end users.
London, UK - UK-2 Group, Ltd acquired Dan Ushman’s Chicago based midPhase Services Inc.’s shared and VPS businesses. Dan keeps his fingers in the pie as he works his way up the food chain - why? UK-2 will collocate the acquired assets at SingleHop, Inc, a company owned and operated by Zak Boca and Dan Ushman. (High 5 on that one!)
My favorite acquisition of the month:
Chatswood NSW Australia - Broadcast Australia entered into an agreement to acquire Hostworks Group Limited a full service dedicated/managed colo company in a $68.9 million transaction. Each firm’s competencies complement each other – actually/really – synergistic - Check out the links to see what I mean. This is a great marriage – also the deal is a 37% premium to the latest closing price of Hostworks shares.
The UK and its past and related domains were busy in December.
========== MORE ABOUT TOM ==========
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8 Drawbacks to Free Web Hosting
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:26:32 GMT
Being that I own a web hosting company, I frequently surf through online forums replying to people’s hosting questions. Of all the questions I answer, I see one that appears over and over again, what are the drawbacks of free web hosting?
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Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:31:18 -0600
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