ACT! in the Cloud

[#1]

Cloud computing is all the rage right now, but the basic concepts behind the “Cloud” haven’t changed in some time. Cloud computing is basically the notion of accessing products and services over the Internet and scaling them in a dynamic manner. ACT! is already playing in this space with ACT! Premium for Web and our Hosting Partners. ACT! Hosting Providers are experienced in hosting technologies and they can help you quickly access your ACT! information in the Cloud (to find a Hosting Provider, check out the Partners link off the www.act.com site).

We continue to evolve our Web presence and would like to hear from you. Some of you already suggested some service ideas in responses to Russ’ post. What other services or products are you interested in accessing via the Cloud? Is this type of business model interesting to you?

[#2]

Sage should host ACT and stand behind the service like Microsoft and SalesForce are doing.  You could then learn directly from your mistakes and hopefully put out a better product even faster so that your consultant channel could focus on helping clients to gain a return on their investment through sales force automation and e-marketing.

PF

[#3]

I would like to see Word integration added to the Web product and to link email directly to Exchange and/or OWA, as well as ability to import. at least the Outlook integration has moved a big step forward.

I've suggested a few times to Sage that a pricing model that would charge per month and include upgrades would make hosting a much easier solution and guarantee a revenue stream for Sage and the channel. Otherwise, it's just oursourcing the IT.

But, after that, ACT! has an advantage over purely SaaS solutions - that is it can sync to remote offices and laptops or (via Handheld Contact) wirelessly to PDAs and give the best of both worlds to provide the best solution to meet the needs of the users.

Regards,

Mike Lazarus

ACT! Evangelist