400 youth will be attending the second annual TEDxYouth conference this Sunday, November 20th at Castilleja School in Palo Alto. TEDxYouth is a recent subgroup of TED, a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.  DreamSimplicity will be on the scene again this year broadcasting the event live.  You can watch the live stream starting tomorrow, Sunday, at 10 AM PT.

TEDxYouth's 2011 "UnXpected!" conference will bring together 32 influential speakers from a variety of industries and professions.  You will hear four 70 minute speaker sessions centered around "Ideas", "Solutions", "Actions" and "Go Forth".  Follow the DS twitter to stay up to date on all the "UnXpected!" fun.

Rachel talked to Matt Childs from DreamSimplicity about Bime and Business Intelligence at Dreamforce 2011!

Thanks for meeting with us Matt! 

Derrick and I will be speaking this Friday at the Bootstrappers Breakfast in San Francisco (SandBox Suites, 567 Sutter St) at 8am this Friday, 18th Feb.

We will talk about “Lessons Learned Being Fearless with a Camcorder.”

DreamSimplicity was started with a mission to knock down the barriers and bridge the gaps that are associated with modern inside sales processes used to sell SaaS and Cloud Products. Low cost enterprise software, means low cost of sale, which also means sales reps are dependent on the phone as means to close business. Customers now have more power to make decisions on their own, hiding behind the protection of a PC or un-answered phone, only emerging when they have made their decision.

It’s not hard to see why video marketing has become one of the most effective Internet marketing strategies around. With all sorts of ads vying for your audience’s attention, you need something to capture their interest and keep them engaged.  Videos are very powerful tools because they engage the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic senses simultaneously. Still not convinced? 

The Facts:

• March 2010 – Nearly 173 Million US Internet users watched online video during the month – a new record high
• For the first time, our neighbors to the north (Canada) – as a whole are spending more time online than watching television
• Cisco recently told WSJ its predictions on video:            

o   Internet traffic will increase 5x over the next 5 years because of the amount of video being transferred

I ran across an informative article from Appirio ( www.appirio.com) - a cloud solution provider, predicting that innovation from cloud ecosystems next year will remove many of the remaining barriers to enterprise adoption of cloud. With so many clear demonstrations of business cases from 2009 (Avon, Japan Post, Starbucks) Appirio believes that the success of the cloud will continue its course to become mainstream in 2010, here's why-

 

Appirio’s 2010 predictions include:

1. Cloud developer community grows faster than open-source. Today's vendor-specific developer communities will be complemented by a community dedicated to the general discipline of building applications on the cloud, disrupting existing on-premise developer communities. The combination will launch a new generation of 'cloud developers.'
2. Cloud standards won't (and shouldn't) happen. The pace of innovation is so rapid in the cloud that the emergence of truly open cloud standards won't yet be possible, except at the lowest levels of infrastructure. Traditional vendors will attempt to muddy the waters across layers and claim the 'standards high ground' with efforts like the Open Cloud Manifesto.
3. Cloud providers tackle lock-in. Platform lock-in remains one of the major concerns keeping CIOs from building applications on PaaS. In 2010 we expect to see major initiatives from cloud providers to overcome this objection, either revolutionary (e.g., Force.com supporting other languages) or evolutionary (e.g., application migration frameworks or platform 'porting' toolkits.)
4. Cloud integration will get an enterprise poster-child. Boomi and Cast Iron have had a fantastic 2009 and we expect one will land a major enterprise customer in 2010 that replaces on-premise integration technology with a cloud-based alternative.
5. Enterprise apps get Googled. Google's investments in its cloud platform will transform Google Apps from a simple Exchange/Sharepoint replacement into a legitimate front end for enterprise applications (e.g., Google Web Toolkit, Secure Data Connector, and the Google Gadget Framework.)
6. Enterprise collaboration is a feature, not a business. Salesforce Chatter and Google Wave have shown the value of real-time collaboration that is seamlessly integrated with business applications. Standalone enterprise collaboration offerings will have difficulty competing.
7. Microsoft lets Azure cannibalize a global account. Microsoft has shown that it's serious about Azure at this year's Professional Developers Conference. We predict that Azure will cannibalize Microsoft's on-premise footprint at a global account.
8. Cloud computing consolidation. With 2000+ providers, the cloud ecosystem is ripe for consolidation. Salesforce.com and Google are likely to continue with point acquisitions, but they won't be alone. Having missed the first wave of innovation in cloud computing (and lacking any other on-premise technology to acquire) we expect Oracle to buy into the industry that Larry Ellison has dismissed as 'water vapor.' Maybe they'll finally snap up NetSuite.
9. Global Systems Integrators will do nothing more than cloud marketing. The most innovative thing we expect from Accenture next year is a replacement for its Tiger Woods ad campaign.
10. The real innovation will be in the business of cloud computing, not the technology. Cloud providers will become dramatically easier to do business with (e.g., Amazon Spot Markets) and new business models will emerge to make the cloud more consumable (e.g., cloud insurance providers, cloud security auditors, cloud brokerages.)

To weigh in on Appirio's 2010 picks, provide comment, or see those predictions that didn't make the cut, please visit www.appirio.com/predict10.

I love it when a plan comes together...  Specifically, I'm talking about the release of the first installment of our web video series highlighting what's new, hot and stimulating in the world of SaaS and Cloud Computing.  This month's episode features a company out of San Diego called eMOBUS - the premiere SaaS solution in mobility management.

It was only a few short weeks ago that Matt and I were sitting at Java Beach down by Ocean Beach in San Francisco, when were brain storming on ideas of how DreamSimplicity could continue to add value to those that make and sell SaaS as well as those companies in need of a software solution.  Sure we had over 1,000 vendor and solution profiles and many white papers and case studies to go along with those.  We had a SaaS event calendar with happenings around the world addressing issues on both the buyer and vendor side of SaaS and Cloud Computing.  We had recently launched our SaaS Video library when the idea hit us.  It was one of those "Hey, we could do this!" moments...

 One of the issues facing SaaS companies is that today's SaaS sales cycle is not the software sales cycle of 5 or 10 years ago...  Gone are the days of high paid sales execs with expense accounts flying business class to press the flesh with potential clients.  SaaS is just too cheap to justify spending that kind of money on just one deal.  The SaaS sales of today is "get in get out", "short and sweet", and "cut your losses and move on".  And that's great for everyone, because as the buyer/user, rather than spending all your time choosing a solution, you can now put that time towards using a solution.  But, what we lose in the process is a feeling for WHO the SaaS vendor really is...  And then there was DreamSimplicity Profiles...