I occasionally contribute to BusinessInsider.com and here is an excerpt from my new book ‘The SaaS Edge’ on how online tools can help you save money in times of a recession. Hope you like it! Do join us on the Facebook page for the book - www.facebook.com/thesaasedge

It explains software-as-a-service, commonly known as SaaS, and how companies can gain competitive advantage using online tools for marketing, building a brand and running their day-to-day business. Shaw runs a hypothetical company that is ready to take the SaaS plunge. At this point Shaw and his team are slowly falling in love with SaaS and are learning how online software can help their business even during a recession…

Recession Friendly

“What do you think of when the recession looms over you? Automatically, we start thinking of lowering costs first. With SaaS, you get access to powerful features, can get started immediately, pay a small monthly subscription fee, and you don’t need to invest in expensive hardware. Seems like Utopia!

So, then when you are looking to slash costs, why would you buy software, servers, and spend money setting them up?

Read more

We wanted to formally blog about the release of Sahil Parikh’s book - The SaaS Edge (published by Tata Mcgraw-Hill, India). The main theme of the book revolves around how businesses can harness the power of Software As A Service, Web 2.0 and on-demand computing to lower cost, increase efficiency and productivity. Everything is moving to the Web and so should your business!

We believe that the book is in line with what we have been working on in the last 3 years - bringing a simple yet powerful tool (DeskAway) to businesses to help them work smarter.

If you are still not convinced about moving to online tools then here is an excerpt from Sahil’s book that you must read - SaaS Myths.

We have created a dedicated Facebook Fan page to talk about the book, post announcements and reviews. Do join us at www.facebook.com/thesaasedge

You can get in touch with Sahil Parikh via Twitter @sahilparikh or by visiting his blog sahilparikh.com.

Have a great weekend!

I spent a year writing this book. It is about Web 2.0 and SaaS and how companies can gain competitive advantage when embracing these new concepts, tools and techniques. An easy to read book (technical jargon simplified) for business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone wanting to take their business to the next level.

When YourStory.in approached me, I was happy to give them a brief sneak preview on one of the chapters. Check it out and hope you like it. Do let me know your thoughts. The book will be published by Tata Mcgraw-Hill before the end of the year. We will anounce it here once it is launched. Hope you like it

[YourStory brings an exclusive sneak peek into Sahil Parikh's upcoming book on SaaS (by the author himself) to be published by Tata McGraw Hill shortly. This article is written by a Cloud evangelist (in the book) who believes in the SaaS business model and debunks existing myths on SaaS. This is part of our ongoing coverage of the NASSCOM Product Conclave, which focused on Cloud computing and lean startups for scaling new heights]

So, you decided you want to start your own company (or you have already started one). My bet is you will run your company using web applications – from CRM, project collaboration to help desk, storage and invoicing. If you don’t then maybe one of these points might be stopping you from taking the plunge. By the end, you will be scrounging the web for more tools…

Here is a short excerpt from my upcoming book (to be published next month by Tata McGraw-Hill, India) on software-as-a-service, commonly known as SaaS, and how companies can gain competitive advantage using online tools for marketing, building a brand and running their day-to-day business. Shaw runs a hypothetical company that is ready to take the SaaS plunge. At this point Shaw and his team love the notion of SaaS but still have certain myths that they need to discuss and dispel.

Read More

GizaPage is a social media application suite that strengthens the relationship between brands and their communities. They have a simple to use social media dashboard to help brands optimize the time, network reach and drive community interactions on their social media initiatives.

Vijay Raypati, Head - Products, GizaPage has shared his views about DeskAway…

How are you using DeskAway and what value is it providing your team?
We use DeskAway to manage all tasks and milestones related to our product roadmap along with the to-do lists. It helps us to get organized and have a clear focus on deliverables.

DeskAway helps us to reduce the communication over-head amongst our team and also helps developers to easily manage there work items. The milestones feature is useful to define and track progress.

Were you using any other tool before DeskAway?
We were using Basecamp before moving to DeskAway.

Was there a learning curve associated with DeskAway? How did your team adapt to a new application?
I would say it takes less than 5 minutes to adapt to DeskAway. We really love the help section for each feature in the product, which helps anyone to get started easily.

What features does your team use the most?
We use Milestones, Task Lists, Email Comments and Work Progress Reports.

Are you emailing (sending tasks, attachments etc.) less because of DeskAway?
Yes, it helped us to cut down back & forth emails on to-do items and follow ups.

How has DeskAway helped in lowering project costs, profitability or improving efficiency?
It certainly helped us to improve the team/delivery efficiency since everybody is on the same page on product goals and milestones. This is very critical for startups and SME’s.

Are there any other thoughts that you would want to share with us regarding our service, product etc.?
Love the simplicity of the to-do lists and the help section. Keep it up!

Thanks!

If you are using DeskAway and would like to get featured, please drop us a note and we will get in touch with you.

Here is my first article for the Business Insider. It is on why we chose SaaS (after I moved back from the U.S.) and the 5 things I learnt from my experiences in the last few years.

India is known as the land of outsourcing, so, when I landed here in 2005 to start a software company I was inundated with service and outsourcing  companies all around me - pretty much providing the same web design and  development services and fighting to retain employees. This is something I didn’t want to be a part of. In fact, seeing the dependency on people and the consequent issues that it creates, made me want to have a company that was system-driven, that had the right processes in place to  make it a dynamic, scalable, light and transparent organization, while providing value to others.

I turned to what I believe is the future of computing: Software as a Service (SaaS). Now, I often look back and try to re-learn from my experiences….

Read the 5 lessons…