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Good document - however ......
Whilst it is understandable for a SaaS Group to come under the umbrella of Intellect; I believe that there is a membership fee in order to join the Intellect Group.
Surely this inevitably means that unless the membership fee is paid one is prevented from making a contribution? With this in mind a whole section of worthwhile contributors are prevented from participating, which surely cannot be a desirable goal?
There are some excellent small start-up's that may have a very valid contribution to make and yet are debarred, simply because they cannot/will not pay the subscription. On this basis the group is highly selective and based on financial wherewithal rather than any other criteria. As a result you are possibly ignoring a wealth of 'grass roots' experience and individual views in preference to corporate members who can afford the fees
This is an unfortunate state of affairs because it is generally recognised that large organisations are very rarely innovators and as such smaller businesses could be the drivers in many new areas.
Intellect and EuroCloud - smaller startups can and do contribute
Hi JC,
Great to be crossing swords with you again.....
First let me say that I'm currently the chair of the Intellect SaaS Group. As well as being involved at the start, I oversaw the final stages and professional re-write of the document in question, which had contributions from 23 different companies of all sizes. The SaaS Group started as an informal group of the online accounting providers in the UK, orginally instigated by Hamish Edwards of Xero, with meetings attended by me on behalf of Twinfield, Duane Jackson of Kashflow, Chris Poll of Validis, Dave Turner of CODA, and Mark Davies of e-conomic. We wanted to promote the SaaS topic to business in the UK, and decided to formalize the group under Intellect, because they have some good influence and could help us do things. We broadened out the topic to cover all SaaS applications (although we decided to not cover the Infrastructure and Platform components of the Cloud). Intellect's fee structure is based on a sliding scale by size of company, so that they can encourage small companies and startups to join - exactly the issue you are concerned about. They have some cool things in the package that make it attractive for a small company to join, like the ability to use their Russell Square offices for "free". So I'm afraid you are misinformed - there was small company input, but the important thing was to get across an explanation of the SaaS topic without the jargon and in practical terms. You say "good document" but I can't understand why you have to find a reason for sniping. By the way, we've tried to cover a lot more of the legal side and the due dilligence that a prospective buyer should do in this area.
Lastly, I happen to be one of the board members of another new vendor/business community called EuroCloud (actually I'm the Treasurer), which will also be doing things that will help the topic. That organization is also setting up its fee structure so that it is affordable for startups as well as the likes of Salesforce and NetSuite (who are founder members) to join.
If you combine the Intellect SaaS Group, EuroCloud and the BASDA Cloud SIG, I'm hoping that we can do complimentary things and all work together to promote understanding of the merits of SaaS and the Cloud so that practitioners can make an informed choice. Watch this space for some exciting initiatives (IMHO).
Everyone else, please go and download a copy of the Business Case for SaaS, or if you want a hard copy, email me and I'll send you one.
David Terrar