Latest News from Rafael Laguna

SaaS and Channel Partners Meet at First Open-Xchange Summit

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Mixing the SaaS delivery model and the on-premise model are a great opportunity for service providers and channel partners. To meet the "who is who" of our Service Provider and Channel Partners you had to be at the Rhein-Energie football stadium in Cologne on Oct. 8, 2009. The day before 30 had registered for our technical workshop, 55 showed up so we split it into two. At the summit we and our 9 summit partners where very happy with the attendence, in total we had 120 people from all over the world. The venue was exciting, a whole stadium just for us (and yes, in a couple of years we intend to fill it up ;-).

IBM Webmail Scares Google to Death - Not

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Reuters published an article titled "IBM takes on Google in business Web-mail market" - bold words but hey, this is Big Blue, right? We haven't seen much from IBM in the SaaS space yet, so this move was about time. What is surprising is the positioning of this offering, low function, low price ($36/user/year) but business Web-Mail. This simple Web-Mail offering is not based on Notes but on Outblaze, a more consumer oriented Web-Mail client from a company from Hong Kong that IBM bought cheaply earlier this year.

What Yahoo Exiting Hosting and SMB / SaaS Means to Hosters

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:30:00 EDT

Tier1's Phil Shih get's it right (as usual): "...Yahoo is also set to unload Zimbra, which Yahoo has had little success leveraging across its small business customer base, although it continues to grow. T1R does not agree that Zimbra had (or has) no hope within Yahoo because it is a solely enterprise-focused product, as some of the media commentary suggests. While Zimbra could be a bit up-market for the Yahoo Small Business base, there is no reason why the product could not have been tailored for the small business market. Or Yahoo could have at least leveraged some of Zimbra's technology and created a premium mid-market email product...".

Google Wave Is Wikis 25 Years Later, Not Email

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:15:00 EDT

For the past 8 years I've been a great fan, user and evangelist of wikis. Wave picks up the original idea from old-time Smalltalker Ward Cunningham and moves it 25 years into the present. Wave is what Ozzie's Groove always wanted to be, but Ozzie missed the Internet, so it found a good home with Microsoft. Wave is the Facebook for more closed groups, but also the MySpace for all the social stuff you want to share with your friends, but may be not with the world.

Open Source Is No "Get-Rich-Quick Scheme" But If You Get It Right...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:00:00 EDT

Money is being made with Open Source. Some make spectacular money by exploiting Open Source (Google, Apple) and some things wouldn't even exist without it (Internet, Software as a Service, Cloud Computing) - so it really boils down to finding the right business model.

Economic Climate Will Accelerate Cloud Computing

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:15:00 EST

Aside from low prices, it's also cash flow and up-front loading of risk and money of traditional, on-premise projects that are driving more buyers to SaaS offerings. In an economic downturn, "do more with less" and quick ROI behavior become the norms. But wait, isn't that what open source and SaaS does? As budgets constrict, as headcounts lower – demands on IT will not decrease; they will almost certainly increase. Open source and Software as a Service will all bring IT staff – and end users – the abilities and cost savings they need and the innovation they want.

SaaS - The Right Business Model for Open Source?

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:00:00 EDT

What does Software as a Service (SaaS) have to do with open source? Not much, you might think. SaaS, as you probably know, is a delivery - and business - model for software that has been proving quite disruptive to the traditional software business - just as the open source model has been. The two combined may turn out to be even more so.

Building a New Communications Highway...

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:45:00 EST

If the Internet did one thing, it dramatically accelerated the flow of information. This, in turn, has led to additional pressures on today's white-collar workers - the so-called knowledge workers. A reply to a written letter may well take a week - more than adequate in the not-too-distant past.