SaaS and Net Neutrality

Katie Campbell (katie@salesboom.com)

I have been following the Net Neutrality events with quite a bit of interest, but only today did I wonder what it would mean for Software as a Service (SaaS ) solutions that have been building and preparing products and services based on a net neutral environment. On the other side, I began to ponder the impact for SaaS customers in terms of service? Price? Performance?

Net neutrality has been a cornerstone to the success of the Internet. It is the one place on the planet where equality and democratic principals reign supreme. Rich corporations and/or individuals have no influence on the priority of processing, distribution or delivery of pages, streams, packets or bits. It matters not that you are accessing from a village on a veldt, a corner in a commissary, an iPhone in the ionosphere, a photo from family, and so forth. It is all equally important, and this is the basis of our appreciation and love of the Internet.

Any change to the Internet is based on the concept of Quality of Service (QoS) and is tied to tiers of service on the Internet, that are purchased for a price. The added expense is passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for VoIP, SaaS, Internet Access, Data transactions such as EDI for example. The argument is that many transmissions are time sensitive, such as VoIP and video streaming, and that these require priority processing and hence the need to revamp the Internet to accommodate this deficiency.

Is this the truth? Is there no other choice for video streaming and VoIP services than to go in and regulate (at significant cost) the Internet. I think not. Who has put out the call for a technical solution? Where are our universities, think tanks, lonely programmers working in the night? I would argue that it behooves every person to take an interest in the preservation of net neutrality in the interest of business, communications, family, hell ........ even love!

What about the Internet Service Providers (ISPs)? Will they be responsible for policing Internet transmissions to distinguish transmission types? Who will decide what content gets priority, is the basis to be on an additional payment, or will it be based on content? Surely the ISPs, a crucial component of any SaaS solution will want some clarification on this element of their service provision. Is this another cost that will have to be factored in?

If you are a content provider, are you prepared to pay extra to provide your materials, will your buyers have to pay more to receive them? The door is open for transmission tariffs once the inviability of net neutrality has been compromised.

Free advice: Stay away from 'managed networks', do not participate in traffic shaping, do not support metered billing based on content (only bits and bytes), transmission tariffs, these are all threats to Internet neutrality.

Please visit my site http://aye-crm-ba.blogspot.com/ and voice your comments and/or concerns. Additionally, you can do your own homework via the Internet to research this topic.

Be sure to share your concerns to your government, business association, and business lobby to ensure the safety of your business, to maintain access to family communications.

Some early morning reading:

Salesforce: Hug to a Half Nelson

CRM: Layers of Complexity

This holiday, I am going to take a break from CRM, not because I want to!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and all the best in the coming year.

Aye

I have been wondering how the On-demand-CRM Service Market will shake out over the next number of years. There are a number of approaches to offering CRM solutions: there is single source- highly integrated solutions, multi-application solutions, and open-source CRM solutions.

In the past, it was not unusual to talk integration, but it was never integration like what we have today. With today's internet platforms, it is possible to truly mix and mash information in the most enlightening and productive ways.

What will be the preference in the long term. Will businesses and organizations prefer to have a single vendor, with all components highly integrated with information holdings closely integrated as well?

Will the preference be for an integration of multiple applications with information straddling different holdings?

Or will OpenSource become more attractive over time as the protocols for business use and security issues resolve.

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Please feel free to post questions for clarification here.

Cheers

Salesboom takes an innovative approach in marketing its CRM Services.

Considering the potential for broad appeal, from every business from the Mom&Pop on up to Fortune 500, Salesboom has decided to test the marketplace, and challenge everyone out there to get up to speed on the latest business technologies and start putting them in place in everyday use.

Also in the picture, is to discover some of the forwarding and linking patterns participants will create in sharing the contest information. All trial sign-ups will be tracked, linked to submissions/contracts, and prizes awarded. It might even generate cash for some smart and savvy business people out there who grasp the CRM concept and the business potential. It could be a lot of fun, and it will be very interesting to see where this goes.

I will post the results in April 2007 and for some reason I am expecting some unusual and exciting results. See below for details. Comments and projections are welcome!

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• employees, and their family members, of Salesboom are not eligible for this contest
• all winners are eligible for the affiliate program
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CRM Mash-up Catch-up

A mash-up, sounds yummy, with gravy. But for anyone out there who doesn't know what a mash-up is, or what it has to do with Customer Relationships, it is about technology, and it's great with or without the gravy! Mash-ups are basically web applications that combine content from multiple sources and serves it up as an integrated information piece. For instance, in servicing a customer, you can build a page that has the customer information (your old legacy database), past purchasing activities (your less old legacy database), the store locations (new POS) and details of purchases (inventory system), weather and news clips for their customer's area (weather network, google news), status of customer order (UPS), and payment history (SAP). What customer rep wouldn't want access to that screen. Mmmmm........

Mash-ups are going to change the way everybody does business. Mostly because mash-ups are changing the way people view and use information on the Internet, generally, right now. As a result, customer expectations will translate into very rich and specific service experiences. The push for a customized customer experience will translate into software expectations that can deliver a familiar processing environment that is in the “comfort zone” and available where and when.