Archive for May, 2008
Working in the microcosm of an Austin startup, it is easy to forget that there are many developers across the world that develop in the same spirit as Mumboe. Seeing literally thousands of Rails developers come together here at RailsConf 2008 is truly inspiring. There is a definite camaraderie and understanding that is shared amongst us.This was definitely highlighted this morning with Joel Spolsky’s keynote speech.
When you think of a programming conference, what are the first things that come to mind? Jargon? Gibberish? Pocket protectors? Yeah, that’s what I expected too (and I am sure I will get my fair share of that), but not this morning. Words like “beauty”, “passion” and “love” were thrown around a lot more than “ruby”, “framework” or “tubes”. That, I believe, is the quintessential thread that ties Rails developers together. We do what we do because we love it. It is as much an art form as a science. Rails is merely the best tool for the job (right now). Find us in 5 years and I am sure that over half of us will be using Widgets on Weebles.This spirit is not exclusive to Rails developers either.
It can become pervasive in a corporate culture as well. Just look at Apple or, on a much smaller scale, Mumboe. About 9 months ago, our entire application was written in a different language and had a different user interface (and was painfully slow). It wasn’t working and no one at the company was happy with it. So, instead of patching it or trying to get something together that worked just well enough, the company implemented a compete usability and code rewrite.
The strange dichotomy of programmers working on websites that they would not otherwise use is pervasive. This has made user input absolutely crucial to any websites success. It is your opinions, requests & criticisms that make all great websites great.
So, I guess what I have taken away from my first day at RailsConf is: This is not your father’s internet. Most of the websites you visit nowadays have small armies of people just like me that are dying to know what you think. So, please, talk to us anyway you can. If you’re already a Mumboe customer, log in to our user forum at support.mumboe.com and tell us what you think. Let us know what you want.
If you are on another site and see something that you think should work differently; tell them. Behind the veil of the internet, their are teams of people working day-in and day-out to create the best products we possibly can, but nothing will ever replace knowing what you, our customers wants.
May 31st, 2008
Author: admin
People here in Austin know what a great place it is to live, but it’s always nice to get some recognition that our local pride is warranted. That’s why it was good to see that the popular personal finance site Kiplinger’s just named Austin to its 2008 list of Best Cities to Live, Work and Play. Austin came in at #6, due to its combination of “laid-back, rockers and tacos atmosphere” and bustling economy. According to the listing, 36% of Austin’s workforce are in the “creative class” while the cost-of-living index remains below the national average. The article goes on to explain, “Already home to the University of Texas, the state capitol and a bustling music scene, Austin has lately expanded its economy to include digital media, green energy and biotech, creating 114,000 [jobs] in the area in the last five years.”
So if you haven’t been here yet, come to Austin, y’all. But be warned, you wouldn’t be the first one to decide you want to stay.
Downtown Austin, Texas
May 30th, 2008
Author: admin
There’s an interesting post on the IT Business Edge blog today by Dennis Bryon citing a research study on the amount of training required by most enterprise software applications. The international study, sponsored by IFS, an enterprise applications company, surveyed more than 1000 users of business applications. Findings included the following:
“Only 1 in 5 cited business applications used in the workplace as easy to use – well behind the web and email applications (27%).”
According to the survey, respondents suggested that adding features commonly found on consumer web sites to business applications would help save time and make users more productive.
You can read Bryon’s full post here.
May 27th, 2008
Author: admin
bMighty.com, the SMB site run by CMP Media, featured an interview with Steven Vine, Deputy General Counsel at Register.com, in an article this week called Saas: Enterprise Power Comes to Smaller Businesses. Register.com, a 500-person Internet powerhouse originally founded as a domain registrar, has been expanding its focus to include a full suite of online business services. Vine, who joined the company a year and a half ago, immediately recognized the need for a system to manage the company’s business agreements. He signed up as an early Mumboe Beta customer and talks in the article about why he chose Mumboe and the benefits of the SaaS delivery model. The article goes on to explain how SaaS applications are giving small and mid-sized businesses access to the same sophisticated functionality that used to be reserved for enterprise organizations with big budgets. Here’s an excerpt:
“Like Register, many smaller businesses are now using SaaS applications to meet their business needs, large and small. And why not? On-demand applications typically have no startup costs, require no infrastructure investments, avoid vendor lock-in, offload upgrades, and don’t require an IT staffer to baby-sit the application. Instead, they offer a predictable monthly subscription fee. Just sign up with a credit card and start using a new application the same day.”
To read the entire article, click here.
May 15th, 2008
Author: admin
We are continually taking suggestions from our customers and incorporating them into the Mumboe product. New features this month include:
Browse Agreements by Folder – In addition to browsing Agreements in the List view, you can now change your view and browse by Folder as well. Click on Agreements in the main navigation bar to go to the List view, and you will now see a link above the list called Folder View. You may toggle between the two views. The last view you use is saved as your default view.
Cancel Agreement Upload – This is a great improvement which allows you to cancel the upload action. Previously, once an Agreement Upload was started, you could not cancel the process (even if you accidentally picked the wrong file). Now, you are presented with a Cancel button, and other options are disabled to prevent you from accidentally leaving the page before the upload finishes.
Mumboe Message Pane – The next time you log in you will notice a new section in the right navigation area called Messages from Mumboe. As this feature expands, we will be adding capabilities and expanding the scope of the messages. For now, users can see messages in this area in the event there are any problems processing documents (i.e. – OCRing and indexing) that previously may have gone unnoticed.
Contact Details Link – All Contact/Party info is stored centrally in Mumboe and can be accessed by clicking the Contacts link from the main navigation bar. We have now added hyperlinks to the Party information displayed on the Agreement Summary and Agreement List views. Clicking on these links allows you to directly pull up the Contact details, where you can view/edit additional information such as addresses and phone numbers.
For more information and feature updates, log in to the Mumboe User Forum at support.mumboe.com.
May 15th, 2008
Author: admin
Great interview in Computerworld with Matthew Glotzbach, director of product management for Google Enterprise on the company’s Google Apps SaaS offering. Glotzbach talks about the benefits SaaS applications offer corporate customers over traditional, behind-the-firewall offerings. The article contains some great quotes about the challenges his company and other SaaS providers face in gaining acceptance with the IT community, like this one:
“It’s a myth that the enterprise user is fundamentally different than the consumer. All users are just people. Users that [deploy] our consumer products are the same as the IT people we’re talking about. They don’t walk through a phone booth and put on an enterprise user cape when they go into work every morning.”
Read the full article here.
May 8th, 2008
Author: admin
Security remains a question mark for many organizations that are considering moving their business apps into the cloud. Craig Balding, an IT security practitioner at a Fortune 500 company, publishes a blog called Cloud Security that does a good job of addressing these questions. He was recently interviewed on NPR’s Monday morning technology show in a segment called Cloud Computing and Security for the Masses. It’s a good overview of what cloud computing is and why the trend matters to businesses. In addition to this primer, Craig’s blog is worth browsing to get a corporate IT professional’s take on this trend, with posts like 5 Reasons Why IT Professionals Shouldn’t Ignore Cloud Computing.
May 8th, 2008
Author: admin
Austin’s insider technology news source, the Austin Startup blog, launched the Austin Emerging 100 today, and Mumboe was named to the list! We’re in good company, the list is a who’s who of tech industry up and comers based here in Austin, including companies like BazaarVoice, ClearCube, FiveRuns, LifeSize Communications and Minggl. See the full list of companies here.
May 7th, 2008
Author: admin
Mumboe’s CEO, Bill Kane, was interviewed today on AustinStartup.com. The blog’s Q&A Wednesday series features interviews with executives from Austin-based hot startups such as Lombardi Software, Sailpoint and Spiceworks. In addition to talking about Mumboe’s recent product launch and growth plans, Bill answers such pressing questions as “How will Mumboe make money?” and the all-important “What’s up with the “e” in Mumboe?” Read the full interview here.
May 7th, 2008
Author: admin
Lately there have been several articles and blog entries published addressing the topic of source code escrow, and why customers buying SaaS software should or should not be concerned. Judging from reader comments on some of these articles, you can see how strongly people on both sides of the fence feel. And since we’ve had a few questions about the topic from Mumboe customers, we thought we’d address our take on it here.
Source code escrow is typically requested as a measure of protection by the company licensing a software application to ensure that, in the event the software vendor goes out of business or stops maintaining the application, the code can be released to the company using it. However, the latest generation of multi-tenant, web-delivered applications are transforming the way software is delivered and maintained, making escrow accounts less practical both for the provider and the customer. Here is why, after careful consideration, Mumboe’s policy does not include escrow accounts:
- Cost – First, take a look at Mumboe’s pricing. In a traditional software licensing model, companies pay large sums upfront to purchase and install the software, and commit to a long-term contract that can span several years. As a web application provider, we are able to offer the Mumboe application to our customers for a low monthly fee with no upfront commitments. Next, have a look at this article (I realize it’s about a year old) regarding Iron Mountain’s decision to offer a SaaS escrow service and the relative cost. To put this in perspective, let’s say you were to purchase a Mumboe Pro account for 5 users. Over the course of a year, your cost for the application would total less than $3,000 (5 users * $48 monthly fee * 12 months = $2,880). According to the article, if you wanted to include a SaaS escrow account with your purchase, you would rack up an additional $3,000 in set-up fees, as well as additional annual fees in excess of $3,000. And that doesn’t include the live backup services you would need to make sure the dynamic data being used in the application is held in escrow as well. A final note on the cost issue – one argument I read recently dismissed the cost of escrow as an excuse, since “the software vendor takes care of it.” But are we really to believe that the vendor is not somehow passing this cost along in the price of its software?
- Frequency of releases – Traditional software providers introduce a major new release maybe once a year, sometimes less frequently. In contrast, since Mumboe launched in March (a little over a month ago), we have introduced three new releases of the application, as well as a few hot fixes. The benefit to our customers is that they have the latest updates and features as soon as they are ready. To include these releases in an escrow account, not only would that have to be factored into the cost described above, it would also require a lot of extra time on the customer’s part to verify that all of these changes are deposited into escrow.
- No physical software – With the Mumboe application, you are actually paying for the service, not the software itself, which is why we are able to make the price so affordable. You basically “rent” the application for a subscription fee instead of buying it.
- No commitment – Mumboe customers can download their data and cancel their service at anytime. All of the data our customers enter into the Mumboe system for tracking and reporting purposes can be downloaded in a CSV file, and all source document files can be downloaded as well.
We recently asked one of our own application providers, Salesforce.com, their thoughts on the escrow topic. Turns out they had a very similar answer: the company does not offer an escrow service for the same reasons I’ve outlined here. I believe as the SaaS space continues to grow this debate will go on, but more and more you will be reading about a more pertinent topic regarding the portability of the data stored within SaaS applications.
May 5th, 2008
Author: James
