SaaS

A listed company invites me as a 'blogger'

Last week I did my debut as a speaker, in my role as a 'blogger' (for my employer I've done 100's), at an event held by the Swedish commercial property company, Brinova. (I've done too many speeches to remember in my 'day job' as Product Manager at Datscha). 

The event

The focus of the event was 'The future of logistics' (since Brinova mainly owns that type of properties). In other words, not the property market itself. Among the 150+ attendees there were people from all the large players like DHL, Schenker and to customers like IKEA. 

The event was, by far, the most tech-savvy 'property event' I've been to. Just to mention two aspects of it, it was live streamed over Bambuser (no quality to talk about but hey, they were trying), and they had the attendees to do polls using their mobile phones (for example what the last topic should be about).

My presentation

I was invited by Brinova's marketing coordinator Jonas Hallström (LinkedIN and @JonasHallstrom) to talk about 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) in general (not commercial real estate specific). An invitation I of course couldn't turn down. 

Here are the slides: 

(Great slides make no sense without the 'sound'...) 

... and from the Bambuser recording. 

(I enter the stage at 1h 29m.

Unfortunately, the sound doesn't work until 1h 58m, and hardly even then.)  

Sum up

Everything went great and I got lot of positive feedback afterwards.

It seems to have sparked quite a few conversations. 

Which was the assignment.  ;-)  

A giant SaaS solution is rolling out in Sweden

Don't believe in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model?
Check this out... Microsoft is rolling out their hosted version in Sweden starting on the 19th March.

The solution includes:

  • Exchange Online (read Outlook)
  • Sharepoint Online
  • Live Meeting
  • Office communication

Read more at Microsoft (Swedish, English).
One of their first clients in Sweden is one of the largest hotel chains in the Nordic countries, Scandic (IDG article in Swedish).

My thoughts
I believe that the majority of small and medium sized business will use hosted versions of tools for mail, communication suites, wikis and so on. The fact that Microsoft is moving in here will make this transition faster than ever.

Still don't believe in the SaaS model?