Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is cited as 82% of today’s cloud investments, and is the deployment model for 84% of new applications, so what is SaaS? SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider, and made available to customers over a network. SaaS provides the most visible value to end users of the cloud models. SalesForce was created in 1999, and was the first SaaS platform built from scratch to achieve rapid growth. The products and services of SalesForce included customer relationship management, the sales cloud, and the service…

When the economy starts showing an ominous downward spiral, companies begin to cut jobs, wages start to decrease, the expressions on most business analysts’ faces seem to oscillate from grave to somber, and then you know that an economic recession has finally hit home. However, when exactly the current spell or financial despair began enveloping corporations and businesses all over the world is still a debatable issue. A common definition dictates that recession begins when the gross domestic product (GDP) shows a negative growth for two successive quarters. The National Bureau of Economic…

In Aladdin, when Jafar was pulled into the lamp after making a monumental mistake of going for too much power, he grabbed his untrusty sidekick on his way down to be stuck in lamp limbo together. The same things seems to be happening with Facebook and Zynga; as Facebook’s IPO crumbles, Zynga’s shares continue to sag. In this Chart of the Day by Statista, it’s easy to see how the fate of the larger company is dramatically affecting the future of the smaller, dependent company. Click to enlarge. Related articles An Inside Look at Zynga’s Bribable Approach to Customer Loyalty (dailyfinance.com) Zynga,…

Now that the company is public, the employees are rich, and the CEO is married, Facebook is ready for some serious business. They’ve slayed most of the dragons they’ve needed to face up to this point, but the game has changed. They can’t just sit back and make money as a side effort. They have to generate more revenue and profits for their numbers to stay strong on the NASDAQ. For the first time in their history, they really have to try from a business perspective. Up until now, making money was a side-effect of their efforts to make the most popular and addictive social network on the planet. They are approaching…