Intacct Winter 2010 - Democratizing World-Class Financial Management

It's funny how cloud computing changes things.

This is briefing week for my team for Intacct Winter 2010, the latest edition of the Intacct Financial Management System. Briefing week means we are out talking with the press, analysts, bloggers and other cloud computing luminaries about what's going on with Intacct as a company (we're really doing great) as well as about the new features of Winter 2010.

In my old software days, we would typically have launched a new product weeks or months prior to shipping the software and certainly before real businesses were up and running in production on it. In the cloud world it's the exact opposite - because we release new features every month - and we can't possibly go out and brief the press and analysts every month - a new product launch instead becomes more of a recap on new features, enhancements and products we've recently put into production.

In the case of Intacct Winter 2010, even though we're briefing on it this week, most of the new features and products actually became available to our clients in the fourth quarter as part of our standard monthly pace of innovation. We've already trained our clients and partners on the new features and we've already seen very strong adoption.

What's nice about the cloud computing model is that instead of having to talk about hypothetical stories about how a new product might in theory work, by the time we hold our external press and analyst briefings we know exactly what it does since hundreds or thousands of clients are already using the new features in production. We get instant feedback and our clients and partners don't have to wait years between new versions of software - they can effectively take advantage of innovation immediately.

Next week I'll post more about what's in Intacct Winter 2010. The general theme of the release is democratization of world-class financial capabilities - making superior functionality available to small and mid-sized business and CPA firms at a fraction of the cost and risk of traditional on-premises software. We've also delivered a lot to help businesses apply cloud computing to more and more of their financial business processes - to take advantage of the Internet to help their firms be more connected, productive and agile.

I'm looking forward to the week - I always enjoy catching up with the press and analyst community and it's even better when we have such a great story to tell.

2010 Forecast: Cloudy with Lots of Sun

This has been quite the week for financial results and predictions for the cloud computing and software market.

1. Gartner Group predicts 17% growth for cloud computing and SaaS firms vs. 4.8% for on-premises software for 2010.
2. Forrester Research says "The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over" and points to growth in cloud computing in 2010.
3. Bruce Richardson of AMR says "If you had listened to me and invested in SaaS stocks in December 2008, your portfolio would be up 300% to 400% by now.
4. And closest to home, Intacct announces 80% growth and the second best quarter in the company's history - and that's quarter over quarter increased growth for an already fast-growing company.

Since the first of the year I've spoken with my counterparts at a wide variety of cloud computing and SaaS firms - and most of them also had unexpectedly, extremely strong and in many cases record breaking Q4's and are really bullish on 2010.

What does it all mean - everyone seems to agree that cloud computing and SaaS will continue very strong momentum in 2010. Cloud vendors grew many times faster than old style software in the teeth of the recession - largely driven by offering much better ROI and business value.

The breaking news is that the cloud vendors saw unexpected, dramatic acceleration last quarter as the market begins to come back and more buyers began to make decisions - and I don't believe the on-premises software companies saw the same dynamic. I think that this signals an inflection point in the shift from on-premises software to cloud-based applications - as the market comes back, the winds are roaring for cloud-based solutions.