Posts Tagged ‘PaaS’
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase News
Tune in Thursday 9/24 at 2pm Eastern time for a webinar entitled: “ How to add Microsoft Outlook to QuickBase”. This open webinar showcases “SendToQuickBase” and “SendToOutlook” an Outlook integration product from SoftTech, Inc. “SendToQuickBase” bridges and extends QuickBase so users have full Outlook Integration for email, meetings, appointments, tasks and contact updates.
Anything that is in Outlook is sent to QuickBase and anything in QuickBase can be sent to Outlook.
Joe Acunzo, President of SoftTech, Inc. will be on hand to show how to set up and use “SendToQuickBase” and “SendToOutlook”. If time permits we will dive in to how this product is used for routing inbound emails directly into QuickBase (i.e., email requests) and how companies use this for logging QuickBase events.
The webinar is entitled, “ How to add Microsoft Outlook to QuickBase” and you can register at http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/.
This is one of 10 live and interactive webinars we hold each week. All are welcome.
by Philip Gross under Industry Trends
Bill Lucchini (our general manager) posted on the Intuit Partner Platform blog about 10 great things that he heard at the ‘Startups and the Cloud’ event we hosted last week.
At the end of the event (or at least the part before the cocktails) I gave a closing where I recapped ten great things I heard. Several people came up to me afterward to request that I publish the list… so, here it is…(in the order I heard them during the day):
- Vishy Venugopalan from Longworth Ventures set a great baseline for the day with this overview of cloud computing.
- Scott Cook shared some great stories about the early days of Intuit from failed ads and trouble meeting payroll to the breakthrough insights that helped Quicken take off…
by Greg Collins under QuickBase News
Product release scheduled for Saturday, February 21 at 8am EST
I wanted to take a moment and let the QuickBase community know about some of the new features that will be coming out with the February product release scheduled for this Saturday, Feb. 21 at 8am.
“Reports” tab gets renamed “Home” tab
It’s more than just a new name. Our product team has added features that allow users to customize this new page even more. Now, in addition to adding your favorite reports you can also add free-form text boxes on your Home tab. You could use the boxes to add a quick list of favorite links, to-do lists, or even embed html, scripts, RSS or images from other websites. It’s like having the features your come to love about application dashboards right on your Home tab.
Conditional Dropdowns
For advanced users “conditional dropdowns” provide a new tool for improving usability and simplifying data entry. Application builders can now filter a dropdown choice by leveraging relationships. For example, if you have a long list of Cities, you can set it up so that the user selects the Country first, then the City dropdown is filtered by that Country. This is a popular request from our users and I know this feature will make the lives of app builders easier in a bunch of ways. Enjoy!
Still thirsty?
I’ll be posting some screen shots and links to support pages over the next couple of days. Those resources should give you a better sense of how these changes will allow you to get more out of QuickBase.
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase News
We launched a new version of QuickBase over the weekend (6am EST on Saturday to be exact.) The release delivers a range of new features that even Santa would be proud of. Included is QuickBase access for the iPhone and a cross-application reports tab on your My QuickBase page.
And there’s more… you will find new tools for improving control, manageability and security in your applications.
| iPhone Access |
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| Cross Application Reporting |
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| Security |
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| Manageability |
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| Other |
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by Philip Gross under QuickBase News
Today we have announced a new developer program and toolkit for Adobe Flex in beta. This is huge news for us, and I want to take a moment and talk about what it is that we are doing.
The QuickBase Development Program is our Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, that allows independent software developers to build their own custom solutions on top of QuickBase using Adobe Flex.
We really think it’s the best, easiest way for a developer to build their own Software as a Service business. Why?
- It’s an extremely fast development platform. Our customers know how fast it is to build QuickBase applications with sophisticated functionality. Flex is a great front-end for QuickBase; it runs on almost any browser, any operating system, and allows for rich, expressive user experiences.
- The QuickBase platform pre-solves a lot of the drudgework with creating a new offering. Every web app needs – login authentication, user and role permissioning, database access, reports, an open API, etc.
- Our pricing model. We charge developers based on the resources they use. Our goal is to keep the pricing low enough to enable developers to release products that can be competitive in the market, and not have to charge a lot per user just to cover their expenses.
- Developers can set their own price, but we take care of the billing. This is actually a huge pain in the neck for developers. Handling financial transactions securely and well can be a time sink for a small organization, especially if they see some success… We already know how to do this, and take away this pain. We’ll bill and collect from your customers, subtract the resource usage, and pay the difference.
- Integration with QuickBooks data – The architecture takes care of QuickBooks integration to these new applications, synching of customers, vendors and employees.
- Access to millions of potential customers. One difficulty of any new release is to get access to customers. These new applications will be listed on the Intuit Solutions Marketplace, which reaches millions of small businesses looking for QuickBooks add-ons.
We are not charging for the developer program; no fee to join; no fee to list an application with us when it’s ready. We really want the program to be for everyone who has a dream, and some ability to code (or to find someone who can code). Space is limited for our beta, though, and we are taking requests now. Check out our developer program page for more information.
by Peter Fearey under Industry Trends, Inside QuickBase
I recently presented the QuickBase business to 50+ marketing leaders at Intuit. During the presentation I made the statement that, “there’s a new market forming and QuickBase has the lead”.
I backed up the statement that “the market is forming” by saying that:
1) in the last year there have been many startups launching in our space, and
2) some established “packaged application” SaaS players have recently been trying to generalize their brands (e.g. salesforce.com and what they are doing with force.com)
I backed up the statement that “we’ve got the lead” by saying that:
1) Independent sources like compete.com show the startups not growing quickly, and
2) If you think about the packaged players with traction in their respective markets, I haven’t seen much public evidence of success with the more generalized offerings.
Compare that to QuickBase where we have over 200K purchased seats using 10’s of thousands of business applications…AND NO TWO APPLICATIONS ARE THE SAME! Because we’ve been focused on ease of use and customization for the last 5 years we’ve seen that every customer’s unique needs are being met by their owner personalization.
After I said that, someone asked me a simple question that, I must admit, I didn’t expect. He asked, “what’s the name of the new market”? I answered by referencing these “markets”…
1) “PaaS” (Platform as a Service). More and more bloggers are starting to place us and others like us in this category. For example, checkout Phil Wainewright’s great roundup of the PaaS space or what Duncan Riley wrote recently about PaaS.
2) Enterprise 2.0. Bill Ives from the Fast Forward Blog suggests we are an Enterprise 2.0 play.
3) Online Database. Many have described QuickBase as an online database. Most notably, checkout what Sean Aune wrote on Mashable.
I think the attributes of the new market are:
1) Targets business users and makes creating and customizing business applications simple,
2) Helps teams track and manage their business processes and workflow, and
3) Is offered through a SaaS model.
When flying home it occurred to me that I should see what others think. So…what market do you think we’re in- one of these or something completely new?
Peter
