Listen to interview with Jeff, recently podcast by Tom Raftery on the IT@Cork blog…

Jeff Nolan is a Silicon Valley veteran who just recent moved on from SAP into a CEO position with Teqlo.

I’ve been a reader of Jeff’s blog for while and am looking forward to meeting with him and hearing his presentation at the IT@Cork Annual Conference on November 29th.

Jeff blogs about, among many other things, new business models for software companies, “Emerging Trends in Pricing and ROI”.

What Jeff has to say has implications for:

1) Software Product Companies
Should you continue to seek up front perpetual per seat type licensing deals or should you seek a recurring revenue model?

This changes the dynamic of your business significantly. It changes how you sell, who you sell to, the nature of your customer relationships, your support structure, your product development plans, your cashflows, etc……

2) IT Departments

As Jeff points out, Business Functions are buying solutions without consulting IT. They have their own budgets and require no IT infrastructure apart from a web interface SO they don’t need IT expert input in the purchase.

Where is the ‘Authority’ and ‘Power’ of the IT Department going?
Where are all the CIOs gone?

3) Financial Managers and Investors in the Software Industry

When big lump-sum up-front licence fees are gone, how does this affect your cashflows and working capital requirement to fund a growing business?

Software As A Sevice (SAAS) is happening at all levels of software to consumers, small to medium business and at enterprise.

Salesforce.com is an example at enterprise level and there are many more….

This post is in response to Joe Drumgoole’s post: “Is the Irish Software Association worth the price?” and on the ISA 2006 Annual conference

If you’re serious about scaling your business, then today’s ISA Annual Conference, was most definitely worth the price.

So is E800 worth the investment in becoming a member of the ISA?

From today’s event and on ISA brochure, the ISA represents the growing software business. So its not about where you are now, its about where you are going.

I thoroughly enjoyed the half-day event in the Dublin today.

Following Minister Michael Martin’s kick-off the programme started with analysts/investors views of the marketplace. We heard from Andy Malik of Lehman Brothers, Eric Hjerpe of Athlas Venture and ex-Siebel senior VP, Melinda Ballou from IDC and Sean Foley from Microsoft.

These were very practical presentations of what works and whats in flavour. We got great information on business and revenue models. (More on this at some other time)

By 11am, I was already overloaded with valuable information and with 5 more speakers to go. But what followed were 5 real Irish technology business leaders who have delivered great international business success. Fergus Gloster, Senior VP Salesforce.com, Garry Moroney, ex-Similarity Systems CEO, Pat Brazil ex Eontec/Siebel, Sean Melly CEO eTel and Peter Conlon CEO Xsil.

The conference and the structure flowed with themes presented by the analysts/investors being supported and compounded by real examples from the technology business leaders.

This was a real “Get Off Your Ass” event.

I’m a soon-to-be member of ISA, again.

Congratulations to Bernadette Cullinane, ISA Chair, and the ISA team behind todays event.

It does need to be discussed whether ISA is a national organisation and if it is assisting new business owner/managers or just experienced business people.

Regional industry organisations, like IT@Cork, should work with ISA in the regions to jointly drive the international growth and leadership agendas.

At the recent IT@Cork event on “Managing a Service Business for Growth” we heard from two successful Cork based IT@Cork member companies on how they built their businesses.

In a previous post I raised the question on whether service business revenue growth was directly related to employee numbers.

The two speakers at the event, Paul Hourican from PFH Computers and Pat Ryan from Abtran, clearly outlined service business revenue growth on a non-linear scale to employee numbers.

The two businesses have defined their services on the basis that they have:

As they are human, the two speakers outlined where they also learned valuable lessons in:

Tom Raftery posted photos of the event Paul Hourican and Pat Ryan

Do check out the next IT@Cork event on “Business used of RSS”

The insights by both speakers provided lessons for all businesses even if you a custom development services businesses.