Google has the largest share of the search market and also through its AdWords program the largest online display network, combined with their extensive content networks across Gmail, Myspace, Bebo, SMH.  They are the best target for any online marketing campaign.  The advantage with online marketing campaigns is that you can measure and quantify your spend on ads when correctly implemented.  

Google is seeking to drive a whole new market with their new product that moved from beta test called the Conversion Optimizer.  This AdWords tool is designed to manage how much an advertiser will be willing to pay for a successful "conversion".  A conversion is the goal the advertiser wants the consumer to reach when they are on their site such as completing a form, signup for a newsletter or purchase of goods. 

Adwords have been sold based on the number of impressions (number of ads displayed in search results) or clicks (actions by viewers), but the value for a conversion is much higher than simple clicks or impressions.  The advantage of understanding the possible conversion rate is you can raise your bid to match your desired response for the campaign.  Limits can be placed on most Adwords campaigns to ensure that you don’t have to pay more than another advertiser, and this revolves around Quality score.  The better the score they less you have to bid on a particular keyword using the AdWord system.

Until August 2008, under the Google Referrals program website publishers received a commission for successful conversions, but this is being re-evaluated by Google Adsense team.

So if you currently use Adsense on your website and have Adsense Referral code in place, Google recommend removal of this "In order to prevent a decrease in your AdSense earnings, we strongly encourage you to replace all referral ad code on your site with AdSense for content ad code prior to the last week of August," Google's support pages now read. "You can get this ad code by signing in to your AdSense account, selecting the AdSense Setup tab, and choosing AdSense for content as the product." 

If you have an existing AdWords account and aren’t receiving the true return-on-investment that you expected or are considering re-evaluating your current online marketing campaign, contact Devnet and we can tailor an online marketing campaign to suit your business.

The NSW Department of Education choose Gmail over Microsoft Exchange for all its 1.5 million students

The NSW Department of Education and Training has decided to switch their 1.5 million student email accounts from Outlook/Exchange infrastructure to Gmail/Apps. This move is said to be one of the largest private deployments of Gmail anywhere in the world and shows the power of Google services which are based on open platforms around Google Apps. 

Macquarie University has already seen the advantage and switched their 68,000 students to Gmail. 

Educational institutions can utilise the power of Google’s servers to support the range of Google Applications such as Google Docs, Presentation, Spreadsheets, Calendar & Sites and reduce their overall IT budgets. 

This story highlights that Microsoft is coming under increasing pressure by competitors who are beginning to nibble away at its Exchange cash cow, offering great products on hosted solutions for great value.

Many businesses can now avoid the issues and expense of installing Microsoft Exchange Server.  The other advantage to business is Gmail servers look after all email infrastructure requirements.

The 'software-as-a-service' model is based around Cloud Computing with much of the infrastructure sitting off site with no requirement for the business to maintain IT infrastructure. 

Benefits of Gmail begin with cost, as hosted Microsoft Exchange is considerably more expensive than Google Apps at the Enterprise level.

The monthly cost of a premium hosted Exchange account through a ISP is $AUD19.95 per mailbox, per month vs an equivalent Google Apps Enterprise account costs $AUD59 per mailbox per year.  That’s a saving to business per user of around $180/year. 

With many SME growing rapidly Gmail reduces extra weight Microsoft Exchange products place on the IT budget.   While both accounts offer different features - the Hosted Exchange account, offers free mobile email access while the Google email account offers more than 10 times the storage capacity also providing full POP3/IMAP access for use with mobile devices.

All these features are being offered free to education users as Google offers a full product suite to education which effectively gives institutions an unlimited number of email accounts plus full access to all other Google Apps services like Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Calendaring.

If your business is looking for a reliable alternative to Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint servers, contact Enterprise Specialist Devnet and we can tailor a solution that will match your requirements. 

Google Apps is a great example of a widely popular cloud computing solution. The following article posted by Glenn Batten on Business2 demonstrates how cloud computing can be a truely effective solution for Real Estate Offices.

Cloud Computing is a trendy name for when you use your internet connection to connect to applications running on the web that would traditionally be installed and run on each of your computers. One of the best and most popular cloud computing solutions is Google Apps although technically web based real estate solutions also fit into the definition as well.

Google Apps provides email, instant messaging, spreadsheets, word processing, presentation and collaborative team websites in an online cloud solution. Since its release it has been fairly US centric however I can remember reading somewhere a little while back that over 5000 small business in Australia have signed up for Google Apps. That might be set to increase now.

Google Apps finally has an Aussie flavour with Devnet and NetRegistry teaming up to be the first resellers in Australia. Till recently attaching Google Apps to a .com.au domain was a manual and technical task but this latest advance means you can now purchase a .com.au domain to be used with Google Apps right from their website as a normal part of the signup process.

The cost to setup word processing, spreadsheet, instant messaging, Intranet, presentation software and email virus scanning is very expensive and online applications make all this available for a 5 person office less than the cost of just a single a copy of Microsoft Office.

In fact, if your willing to put up with a a few ads here and there, along with no telephone support you can even have it for free. Google Apps also allows users to act collaboratively, something that is only available with additional server versions of installed software such as Microsoft Small Business Server.

Existing agencies can take advantage of a host of official and non official migration tools which converts your existing email and documents over to Google Apps.

Google Apps is now integrated with Salesforce which provides web based CRM facilities into the mix. Check out their Product Tour at www.salesforce.com/products/google/apps/tour/. Having your office software integrated into your CRM is really a slick combination that is well suited to smaller agencies.

Unfortunately as an office gets larger so does the administration load and having a solution that can integrate trust, listings management, ages and commission into the CRM mix is where solutions like Hubonline, Multiarray and Portplus. There is no perfect solution blending it all into one and its a matter of which one do you want your CRM to integrate best with, your normal office software or your real estate administration.

Both Salesforce and Google Apps are fairly open to developers to integrate other solutions so if someone could develop the holy grail, a solution to integrate a real estate administration solution with the already existing salesforce/google apps combination it would win a lot of larger agencies very easily. Can I smell a startup?

Until then if you are starting up a new agency or running an agency with under 10 staff it may be well worth your time to consider a Google Apps or a Google Apps/Salesforce Combination.

Reference
Business2
Glenn Batten
4th June 2008

The following article taken from CNET.com on the Mozilla release of Firefox 3 on Tuesday supports the strong recommendation for the new version of Firefox for its speed and usability improvements for users of Gmail, Google Apps and Salesforce.

Mozilla released Firefox 3 on Tuesday, opening a new front in the browser wars.

Browsers are growing up. From being mere gateways to the internet, they have transformed into tool that make online applications possible. In this new era, it's Firefox — the heir to the Netscape legacy — that's going up against the victor of the last era, Internet Explorer.

Firefox is the second-ranked browser in market share for May 2008. (Credit: Net Applications)
"It gives you the horsepower you need to experience rich internet apps as they should be from a performance standpoint," said Damon Sicore, Mozilla's director of platform engineering, who mentioned Gmail and Google Maps specifically as applications where users don't want to wait. "As these apps get bigger and more complicated, faster browsers are going to become more critical."

Specifically, it takes 60 milliseconds to change Gmail from showing one message to another with Firefox 3, Sicore said, compared with 413 milliseconds for IE 7 and 227 for Firefox 2.

Microsoft is toiling away on IE8, though, with a first beta released and a second scheduled to emerge in August. The program has been reworked to improve performance, said Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft's general manager in charge of IE. With no prompting, he mentioned Gmail as one area where the company has received favourable feedback, and he clearly welcomes the competition.

"IE is the browser of choice for more people on the Web than anything else," Hachamovitch said. "There's an all-around quality, whether in ease of use, reliability, the security we stand by, that makes it a better choice."

Vying for share
Mozilla is a force to be reckoned with, with 18 per cent market share to 74 for IE, according to Net Applications statistics. That's enough to ensure that major websites have to support Firefox.

Apple's Safari — now available for Windows too — is in third place with six per cent share. The next contender, Opera, has less than one per cent, but it's scrappy: "The browser is the single most important piece of software made today, so innovation is incredibly important if you want to extend the reach of the web," the company said in a statement.

Microsoft knows the stakes are high, with a richer web coming into being. "It is a particularly fertile period. A bunch of pieces started lining up magically in the last couple years to get some innovation going here," Hachamovitch said.

Firefox 3 has been steadily climbing in usage through its testing period.
(Credit: Net Applications)
Firefox isn't shying away from competition either. To try to heighten its profile, Mozilla hopes to set a 24-hour download record with Firefox 3, which has been code-named Gran Paradiso.

Perhaps a more fruitful alternative to whipping fans into a lather though, would be to court business users.

"Mozilla needs to show corporations some love," said Forrester analyst Thomas Mendel in a recent report. "Large-scale, companywide deployments are not yet typical. Mozilla continues to expend little energy on wooing IT managers to formally adopt Firefox," for example by offering paid support services, he said.

Firefox 3 features
Faster performance is one Firefox 3 improvement Sicore points to. Two others are better memory handling and what's known as the Awesome Bar.

To test memory use, Firefox programmers load 500 pages from top websites then close and open them thousands of times. Through that process, Mozilla stamped out many memory "leaks" under which Firefox 2 wouldn't relinquish memory once it was no longer needed, Sicore said. The company also reduced the amount of memory the browser requires overall.

But memory is hidden under the covers. Front and centre is Awesome Bar, officially called the Smart Location Bar, which lets users type real words rather than sometimes abstruse URL addresses to call up websites.

Mozilla uses its own formula to determine what results pop up in the list, weighted by factors such as how recently and how frequently a user visited various websites.

The awesome bar has its detractors who'd like the feature to be optional. (Tweakers can disable the awesome bar by editing their Firefox configuration.)

Among other features in Firefox 3:

A prominent warning when a user tries to open a page that has been shown to host malware or has been involved in phishing — the attempt to fool people into entering personal information into a counterfeit website.
Offline data access, a feature that can make web applications usable even when the network is unavailable. That's a potential boon for web apps, but future versions of IE 8 and Safari also support the technology.
Web-based protocol handlers, which let the browser launch a web application rather than a PC program for certain actions such as a website "mailto" link that otherwise would create an e-mail in software such as Outlook.
The Cairo graphics engine that lays the foundation for better direct integration with a computer's video hardware. "Video inside the browser is coming," Sicore said.
Animated PNG (Portable Network Graphics), another nail in the coffin of the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) image type.
A better full-page zoom feature that devotes maximum screen real estate to the browser. Moving the mouse pointer over a thin strip across the top of the screen temporarily pulls down the browser controls.
A star button to quickly add bookmarks; double-clicking opens a dialog box that lets users describe bookmarks with tags.
Support for Windows Vista's parental controls.
Better support for Mac OS X. For example, it has a Mac-native appearance and has been re-plumbed internally to use Apple's Cocoa technology, a necessary step on the road toward 64-bit support.

Plug-in problems
One of Firefox's claims to fame is the wide collection of add-ons that are available, which include Yahoo's Delicious and the Firebug tool for website developers.

One that will not be ported to Firefox 3 is Google Browser Sync, which synchronises bookmarks, passwords, and other settings across multiple installations of Firefox 2. "Phasing out Google Browser Sync was a tough call, but we have decided to focus our efforts on other products, like Toolbar and Gears, that also extend the capability of multiple browsers," Google said of the Labs project in a statement. Happily, there are other alternatives such as Foxmarks.

Of the top add-ons, "the majority have upgraded 3.0," Sicore said. The laggards will have a grace period "on the order of months" before Firefox 2.0 versions will automatically suggest installing the upgrade.

You can get the new Firefox 3 download here

Reference
CNET.com.au
Stephen Shankland
18 June 2008

The rise of data-intensive applications, data centre pressures, and mobile and networking technologies is driving a business uptake of cloud computing, Gartner analysts say.

Speaking at Gartner's Emerging Trends and Technologies Roadshow in Sydney this week, VP and Gartner Fellow David Cearley explained that the Web is no longer an application, but has become a platform for building new applications.

Gartner predicts that by 2012, 80 percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises will be paying for some cloud computing services, and 30 percent will be paying for cloud computing infrastructure services.

New Web technologies are expected to yield new services, platforms, utilities, and business models for businesses and service providers.

Cearley used the example of Amazon, which began as an electronic bookstore in the mid-1990s, and has grown to provide Amazon Web Services including a platform for other eCommerce vendors within a Web 2.0 setting.

"Just as the Web builds on the Internet, the Cloud builds on the Web," Cearley said.

By providing programmatic access to Web-based services on which applications and businesses may be built, cloud computing is expected to yield cost savings for IT functions that are large-scale, common and standard.

But the outlook for cloud computing isn't all clear skies just yet.

While some cloud computing providers tout free services, Cearley noted that many such services are subsidised through advertising, or by selling users' data as "business intelligence".

Furthermore, some cloud computing technologies still are immature, which may lead to problems in service management and usability.

Cearley highlighted the cultural issue of trust as a major barrier to widespread adoption of cloud computing.

"Cloud-based services probably don't meet the needs of enterprise computing today," he said.

"[But] over the next five years, we expect them to creep into mainstream use, right at the same time that current enterprise computing models run their course."

Paul Slakey, who is Google's Head of Enterprise Sales, Asia Pacific and Latin America, agrees that trust is an issue for businesses looking to venture into cloud computing.

Speaking at the Transaction 2.0 conference at CeBIT last week, Slakey described discussions with businesses considering the adoption of Google's hosted applications and services.

"It tends to be a complex sale,” he said, adding that adoption tends to be driven by a "visionary", but contested by other managers and employees of the company.

"There are cost advantages and so on, but in the end, it comes down to trust," he said.

"We understand that SaaS companies like Google need to earn your trust, and we understand that it's not going to happen overnight."

To build a trustworthy reputation among enterprise customers, Google will undergo audits to obtain SAS 70-1 and SAS 70-2 certification, Slakey said.

While he described cloud computing as a vibrant market that will incubate a broad range of competitors, Slakey expects the market for on-premise software to remain.

"This is a new wave, but it's not going to replace the existing,” he said. “On-premise software is not going to go away."

To address the demand for on-premise data storage and offline access, Google is working on developing offline functionality for its range of Web-hosted applications.

"We're very close to having offline Gmail," Slakey said, adding that Google employees currently have access to an internal-only version of offline Gmail.

Gartner's Cearley named Amazon, Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Microsoft, and IBM as vendors that are leading the charge towards computing in the cloud.

Just as Microsoft won a majority of the software market share by establishing Windows as the primary ecosystem for Independent Software Vendors to develop new software and applications, Web service providers are battling for a lion's share of the cloud computing market, he said.

"Vendors are battling for ultimate control of business computing in the next decade," he said.

"With the advent of SOBAs [Service-Oriented Business Architecture] and related technologies, each camp and its current and potential clients will make monumental decisions that cannot be reversed."

"Proper use of the infrastructure stack and related Web services will be key for 'megavendor' success," he said.

Reference
iTnews - Breaking IT News for Australian Businesses
Liz Tay
28 May 2008

Australian companies Netregistry and Devnet partner to deliver Google Apps™ to business via a channel - an Australian first

Sydney, 28 May 2008 - Australian companies Netregistry and Devnet have forged an Asia Pacific first strategic alliance to resell Google Apps to Australia. For the first time a version of the Google Apps suite has been created specifically for marketing through a channel rather than Google's global model of marketing direct.

Devnet is partnering with Netregistry, Australia's leading domain name provider to bring Google Apps to Australia.

The Google Apps suite includes local domain name integration, business email solutions, collaborative calendars, and corporate instant messaging. With Google Apps businesses have the next-generation communication and collaboration tools they need to manage electronic communications, share and publish information, and stay connected while on the go.

Paul Slakey, director of sales for Asia Pacific and Latin America, Google, said, "For Google, the agreement with Devnet and Netregistry allows businesses without an existing internet domain to acquire an Australian domain (.com.au) when they sign up to Google Apps.

"We've been thrilled with local businesses response to Google Apps and are delighted to be working with Devnet and Netregistry."

Larry Bloch, chief executive officer, Netregistry, said, "Netregistry maintains an advisory relationship with 250,000 businesses in Australia. We look forward to assisting our customers take advantage of Google Apps to reduce costs while increasing productivity and profits. Our partnership with Google and Devnet is a perfect example of how Netregistry is the ideal partner for large organisations wanting to access the Australian SME market."

Craig Deveson, chief executive officer, Devnet, said, "Alliances with Telcos, ISPs, and associations are vital to meeting our objective of taking Google Apps to small and medium enterprises (SME) and corporate organisations. Through these partnerships, businesses all over Australia will have access to a range of applications that are powerful, simple to use and deliver real productivity gains.

"Devnet has partnered with Netregistry, as it has years of experience and understanding of the SME market, which we believe, is a huge growth area for Google Apps in Australia.

"Telcos and ISPs are perfectly positioned to grow Google Apps in the business segment. This marks the start of the Devnet plans to partner with ISPs to grow our business.

"Google has delivered a clearly differentiated product and we are confident business will get on board once they discover how incredibly easy to use Google Apps are.  We are preparing for rapid up-take."

About Devnet

Devnet is a leader in the provision of online consulting, web design, web development and web maintenance and optimisation using the very latest in web analytics. Whether it be website development, internet applications or effective e-marketing, branding and digital presentations, our clients gain significant competitive advantage and return on investment (ROI) through the development of effective online business solutions.

Devnet is a company dedicated to the effective use of the Internet to achieve our customers' business goals. We recognise the primary need of our staff to build business acumen and remain expert in the developing technologies to achieve this end.

Devnet is partnered with Microsoft, and Web Central and is a member of the Australian Management Institute, the Australian Marketing Institute, and the Queensland Leaders Group to keep abreast of the topics influencing the website development and online marketing spheres.

Devnet has been listed in the BRW fast 100 October 2007, and won awards such as the Deloittes Fast 50, Q400, and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

About Netregistry

Netregistry was founded in 1997 with a mission to deliver best of breed online products and services to the Australian SME market. Its world class infrastructure and global award winning customer service operation underpin the rapid growth that has seen it become the largest provider of Australian domain names and associated services, with over 250,000 Australian businesses serviced daily.

Netregistry publishes NETT Magazine, Australia's most widely circulated SME Business publication. NETT Magazine inspires and motivates small business owners to take advantage of the opportunities online offers to survive, compete and win. With the company's core strengths in domain names, hosting, ecommerce and search marketing Netregistry is a one stop shop SMEs wishing to take their business further online. Netregistry provides SMEs with all the required elements of 21st century digital business infrastructure.

Late in 2007, the Google User Experience (UX) group - which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing - set out to articulate the principles that ought to guide Google designs worldwide. What are the fundamentals that all Google designers and researchers accept? Which approaches to design are particularly "Googley"? How can we encourage teams throughout Google to dream big and make smart design decisions?

A small team gathered to discuss these questions and define the Googley Design Principles:

1. Focus on people - their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people's trust.
10. Add a human touch.

These UX principles flow naturally from the Ten things Google has found to be true and the UX group's stated mission: to design products that satisfy and delight our users. We described the principles as "Our Aspirations" for two reasons:

We have a lot of work to do when it comes to implementation.
Every real-world product will have to strike a balance between all ten principles.
Still, we don't want to waffle too much. These principles represent the User Experience group's declaration of beliefs. With "Satisfy and Delight" stitched on our leotards, we're determined to get up on the tightrope and start juggling principles. Please applaud or boo, as appropriate, so that we can make the next act even better.

Reference 
Official Google Blog 23/04/2008
Sue Factor - Writer

The following predictions posted by Jeff Kaplan late last year, published on his ThinkIt Services blog spot, reasoned forecasts of why the shift from packaged products to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), utility computing and managed services will accelerate in 2008. Are these predictions coming true?

1. Services are Recession Proof: Escalating oil prices, the uncertain political landscape and faltering financial institutions beset with the aftereffects of the sub-prime lending debacle could mean a tough year for the economy. In this tenuous climate, consumer and executive confidence could decline, leading to an economic slowdown. As a result, many companies could hold back on their capital investments to mitigate their risks. The ability to adopt on-demand services on a pay-as-you-go basis will be a perfect sourcing strategy for businesses seeking greater cost-controls and flexibility.

2. Everyone's Going Virtual: Most industry pundits and participants view virtualization as a technology trend, but it is also a business trend. Employees are increasingly working outside the four walls of a traditional office. Gen Y workers are always on the move and online. Traditional, on-premise applications and centralized servers sitting behind a firewall can't effectively serve today’s mobile workers. SaaS and managed services are perfectly suited for these new, virtual business requirements.

3. Amazon, IBM and Google Bet on Utility Computing. After experimenting with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for the past year, Amazon has found plenty of demand for its computing power on-demand platform from startups, as well as established companies seeking a 'sandbox' for their new initiatives. Amazon is now confident it can deliver its computing power in a reliable and cost-effective fashion to a broader market of business users. So, expect more aggressive PR and marketing efforts to promote and sell this powerful utility computing service.

IBM Blue Tune: IBM originated the term on-demand and then walked away from the utility computing market seeking new opportunities among the avatars. When Amazon proved that the utility computing concept could become a reality, IBM repackaged its autonomous computing ideas in the form of a new 'blue cloud' initiative. Big Blue will push the idea hard in 2008.

The GooglePlex Makes It Move. Google is tired of sitting on the sidelines while Amazon's success and IBM's new 'blue cloud' initiative, Google has initiated a PR campaign to promote its 'cloud' computing capabilities and strategies. The GooglePlex has long been considered the prototype for a new large-scale computing architecture. Now Google's incredibly scalable and economical computing engine is getting the attention of business pubs like BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream pubs.

4. Nick Carr Returns: In truth, he never left us. It was Carr who gave utility computing a major push with his seminal article in the Harvard Business Review and follow-on book questioning whether IT mattered. Despite venomous criticisms from many IT pubs and professionals, Carr became a popular speaker at corporate events because his message resonated with business executives and end-users. Now, he is putting the finishing touches on his second book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which will be published on January 7, 2008. Although IT folks love to hate him, Carr has never lost his luster among corporate executives and end-users who agree with his basic premise that IT is a needless hassle and should be as easy as electricity and as reliable as a utility.

5. SaaS Solves SOX: A year ago, most publicly traded companies and other large-scale enterprises rejected the idea of SaaS because they thought they needed to take greater responsibility for their own compliance requirements. Now, they view the process controls, auditability and offsite hosting features common in most SaaS applications as a perfect solution for their Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) needs. As a result, enterprise adoption of SaaS will accelerate.

6. Managed Services 3.0, Unified Communications Services and Service Automation: In the 80s, managed services were really outsourcing agreements offered by carriers to their largest corporate customers. In the 90s, a new generation of standalone MSPs promised managed services for SMBs. Neither model succeeded.

Today, we are entering a new age of managed services. Managed Services 3.0 combines the experience of the past with powerful new technologies to respond to growing customer demand. Cisco Systems will be pushing its IP communications and WebEx capabilities hard, while Microsoft promotes the virtues of its various "software plus services" solutions. The two are on a collision course in the unified messaging and communications market, but that will mean that they will each spend plenty on market education and channel sales programs.
At the same time, Dell will be leveraging its SilverBack Technologies and Everdream acquisitions to deliver a new set of automated, remote desktop and server management capabilities through channel partners and direct support services. Expect to hear more from HP and others.

7. Carriers and Channel Companies Find Success With New Services: Carriers have been perplexed about how to package, price and promote profitable managed services. VARs have been afraid that SaaS would 'dis-intermediate' them by eliminating their consulting and custom application development business. Carriers now see an opportunity to deliver an integrated package of IT managed services and SaaS business solutions to add value to their commoditized dial-tone services. Channel companies are also discovering that there are still consulting and customization opportunities in the SaaS market. As a result, carriers and channel companies will lend their marketing and sales support to managed services and SaaS.

8. Failure Doesn't Matter: NaviSite suffered an extended outage in November and the on-demand services movement didn't miss a beat. The trade press is now looking for horror stories rather than success stories regarding SaaS and managed services, but the vast majority of stories have been positive. In fact, my third annual SaaS survey in conjunction with Cutter Consortium found 100% satisfaction among the companies currently using on-demand software services. The upcoming SaaS conference will highlight some of these customer success stories. THINKstrategies will also spotlight these stories throughout 2008.

9. IT Discovers Services are the Solution: In the past, the IT department was the biggest barrier to managed services and SaaS adoption. Many IT professionals were afraid these on-demand solutions would eliminate their jobs. Now, a growing proportion of IT people see managed services and SaaS as a way to out-task mundane work or overcome complex application/technology deployment and maintenance responsibilities. As they learn to take advantage of these on-demand solutions, IT departments will finally be able to put their daily firefights aside and focus on addressing the strategic needs of their business users.

10. Wall Street Buys Into Services: Some of the most successful IPOs of 2007 were in the SaaS market. Wall Street loves the predictability of subscription services and now that it has a solid set of market 'comps' to measure business success in the services market, it will be encouraging more privately held companies to go through the IPO door. At the same time, private equity funds will be encouraging publicly traded software companies to go private to enable them to shift to a SaaS model without the public market pressures. And, the investment bankers will be pushing a wide array of M&A activity. Expect the offshore IT/business process outsourcers (IT/BPO) and business services companies to buy SaaS vendors. Look for more consolidation in the managed services market.

The future of the SaaS model was enhanced again recently, when Google released a Beta version of Appengine. This Google App Engine enables developers to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. Once the platform is commercialised it will make the writing and hosting of applications much easier, quicker and cheaper! The ramifications for the industry in general and hosting companies in particular are significant.

Advertising spending soared by 11.5% in 2007 with online, subscription television and suburban newspapers all showing significant increases on the previous year.

Figures from the Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia showed that total ad spend, excluding agency commission came in at $13.2bnin 2007.

Online continued to be the star performer, up 34.5% to $1.35bn. Subscription TV was up 29.8% to $275.6m, while free-to-air channels were up 8.3% to $3.5bn. Suburban newspaper recorded the third largest increase, up 27.9% to $801m. Ad spend at metropolitan and daily newspapers was up 4.3% to $2.34bn, while regional dailies grew by 14.7% to $432m. Magazine ad spend was up 4.2% to $780m, radio up 6.4% to $984m and outdoor up 15.3% to $436m. Cinema advertising increased 8.8% to $93m.

CEASA managing director, Bernard Holt, said: “Apart from hard work by all the media concerned, another factor in the increases was federal election advertising from about March to November 24.

“As mentioned in our report, Glen Steven, Governor of the Reserve Bank, said in January that notwithstanding international financial difficulties and some pain locally, the Australian economy was still in very good shape. A reflection of this was in the 2007 figures, particularly the second half of the calendar year.”

Commenting on the radio figures, Joan Warner, CEO at Commercial Radio Australia said: This is good news for the radio industry which is continually working to keep radio top of mind with advertisers. These figures also highlight the importance of new strategies, like radio working in partnership with online, to ensure maximum advantage in today’s multi-media world.

“It is also a significant feat that the radio industry has recorded growth in attracting advertising revenue over the past seven years, despite a couple of slower years.”

Source - B&T Today, Marketing - Advertising - PR - Media
Thursday 10th April 2008

Your website should have already developed into your businesses 'P'rimary marketing vehicle.  If it hasn't, you're being left behind. There's a massive world-wide shift occurring in marketing from offline to online. The reason’s simple, you can measure online marketing.

The combination of 'Cloud' computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is another momentous shift in the evolution of the Internet. Over time the web’s evolved from being just a source of information into a world-wide commercial online marketplace. It continued that development with its movement into Social Networking and business engagement with the rise of websites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Now we're watching another major shift, one that brings business processing from offline to online. Its impact will be vast. As a marketer, you will have greater access to information about your customers and be able to reach them better with online analytics.

Cloud computing allows Services to be coupled in an infinite variety of forms on scalable infrastructure that will eventually make every enterprise a node in the Cloud. It’s a long-running trend with a far-away horizon. But, among the larger trends, the combination Cloud computing and SaaS is the hardest to argue against in the long term. The sky’s the limit.

It will soon become possible to plug into the ultimate marketing information base. One where the availability of online aggregated data will surely lead Marketing departments into defining an additional 'P' – for Participation.

Paul