You read that right - 250% year over year growth at Intacct

Blasting off with cloud computing

Earlier this week, Intacct announced record-breaking quarterly results for the first calendar quarter of 2011 - this was by far the best Q1 in the history of the company. New sales grew by 250% vs. the same quarter in 2010.

We had a record number of replacements on on-premises software apps from Microsoft, Intuit and Sage and a record number of head to head wins against NetSuite. We'll wait to hear NetSuite's financial results for Q1 this afternoon, but it's safe to say Intacct is growing many times faster.

There is just so much pent up demand for cloud computing and  better applications as we come out of the recession - we can all feel the momentum.  The last big mass transition to new applications was in the late 1990's as business moved from character-based to client-server software.  The recession really slowed down adoption of new application over the last few years - meaning that the market has become overdue for another big adoption wave.  As Intacct's results show, with the recession easing, the transition to the cloud for core business applications now really appears to be happening in numbers.

Intacct's channel partners are seeing amazing results. Many of our partners had seen demand for the on-premises software they have been selling completely dry up. What is so exciting to me is that within 90 days of partnering with Intacct the partners are seeing amazing success; channel partners are now putting new customers on the system in record numbers - leading to a ten fold increase in new sales from our VARs vs. the same quarter last year.

If you read the press release above, we included two quotes from our channel partners about the success they are having with cloud computing and Intacct. What's particularly interesting is that we didn't ask these partners to craft some glowing marketing hype - we simply asked them "can you write up a paragraph about what has happened since you joined the Intacct family.

• "We've had a tremendous start in our efforts to sell and implement Intacct," said Matt Armanino, COO and Consulting Partner at Armanino McKenna. "After announcing our VAR partnership just three months ago, we've already kicked off two projects with Bay Area technology companies and added another full time consultant to our practice. Intacct has clearly invested significantly in its partner enablement program and my team has benefited from extensive training and coaching by Intacct's experts."
• "AccessTek on-boarded with Intacct quickly and easily, and we signed our first two Intacct clients in the initial quarter of our newly formed partnership," said Lindy Antonelli, founder and CEO of AccessTek. "It is so refreshing to talk with business owners and decision makers about the Intacct cloud offering. Our clients have a pent-up demand for the world-class accounting functionality, the platform integration offerings and the level of customer service that Intacct delivers." 

And that sums up why cloud computing and Intacct are on such a roll.  Great applications with very high ROI, and great partners adding their expertise to the mix. What a very exciting time for everyone in the Intacct family and in the cloud computing world. 

A Cloudy Day at the White House

Today is a proud day for Intacct.

As I write this, our CEO, Rob Reid, is at the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe and Jill Biden, General Stanley McChrystal, Barry Melancon, the CEO of the AICPA, Ken Yancy, the CEO of SCORE and senior execs from Walmart, HP, Microsoft, Cisco and Salesforce.com.

The topic at hand is a major new White House sponsored, nationwide initiative called "Joining Forces" and it's all about taking action to give our military and their families the support they have earned.  Less than one percent of the US population are in the military, and they've been fighting on multiple fronts since September 11.

This is a huge initiative, with commitments from more than 50 cabinet agencies and a who's who of corporate America focused on employment, education and wellness for military members and their families. 

Intacct CEO Rob Reid with Michelle Obama

So what is the role of Intacct and cloud computing in all of this?

A major focus of Joining Forces is on improving the economic opportunity for military veterans and their families. Cloud computing will play an essential role.

Intacct has partnered with the White House, SCORE, the AICPA and the other leading technology vendors mentioned above to provide a basket of pro-bono training, services and technology that will help veterans and their families become entrepreneurs - to start and grow hundreds of thousands of businesses.

SCORE will provide entrepreneur training and mentoring through it's network of 13,500 volunteer mentors and trainers. The AICPA will offer the veterans education on a wide variety of business related topics such as financial literacy, and will connect it's 45,000 AICPA-member CPA firms with the new entrepreneurs. Those CPA firms will provide pro-bono business startup, advisory and accounting services, and will on-board veteran owned businesses onto the Intacct system.  Intacct will provide no-charge cloud financial software to get the veterans and their families started.

The technology vendors taken together will offer a no-charge basket of state of the art cloud-based applications to the veterans and their families that leverage the Internet and cloud computing to improve productivity, increase transparency and reduce costs for their entrepreneurial initiatives - financial management and accounting from Intacct, CRM from Salesforce, web-based email and office from Microsoft, web conferencing from Cisco, security from AVG, point of sale from Square and more.

What are the takeaways?

• What I love about joining forces is that it's not at all government handouts.  It's about tools and training to help veterans and their families become entrepreneurs. All of the organizations involved are delighted to help.
• It's another ringing endorsement for cloud computing - from the SBA to the FCC to the rest of the executive branch, the government clearly understands the benefits of the cloud for American business - and have put their weight behind the cloud for one of the most significant business oriented programs of the year. 
• There is the potential here for hundreds of thousands of businesses to be started and grown with exclusively cloud-based infrastructure. What a great proving ground for the productivity of the cloud.

Like I said, this is a proud day for Intacct. We were delighted to have been selected to be a part of this elite group, and we're even happier to be in a place where we can give back to the extraordinary military families who, like their loved ones in uniform, serve and sacrifice so much so that we can live in freedom and security

To learn more, you can visit the White House, read the White House press release, or go to  SCORE or Intacct.