Photoshop as SaaS

Photoshop has announced that they will offer a web based version of Photoshop within six months. I think this is an interesting development. Many would have pointed to Photoshop as a prime example of a desktop app that couldn’t work as SaaS. I suspect the SaaS version will not have all the power of the desktop version but on the other hand will have the key features that a majority of us non-designers use every day. And the fact that it will be free and carry’s the Photoshop name is sure to result in lots of users.

What I’m not sure about is the revenue model. Do you think they will get sufficient revenue from Banner Advertising? What kinds of ads will I get when I’m going to edit an image that will cause me to stop wanting to edit my image and click on them? With the price of Photoshop what it is wouldn’t they be more profitable if they charged say $9.95 a year for access? Or what about some type of App Exchange where you could buy additional filters or macros?

How do you think adobe could best monetize the online version of Photoshop?
 

Foldera Loses VP

I’m trying not to post on Foldera too often but but I know a lot of you are searching for information and ending up here. If you haven’t heard, Michael Sampson has left Foldera (previously the Global VP of Word-of-Mouth Marketing). I don’t know Michael personally but I know many respect his insights within the industry and hope that this does mean he’ll be able to contribute more to the general dialogue and wish him the best of luck in whatever he pursues next.

As for Foldera, how could they hire a VP of WOM Marketing? They don’t have any customers. And what exactly is being marketed? Maybe this was a bit of the issue, how can you measure success in marketing when you can’t give prospects a call to action? In the end Brand awareness has to result in customers.

Firefox to Facilitate SaaS Offline?

We’ve talked about how customer demand for offline support for on-demand applications continues to grow. Part of this years show was to watch who joined the few existing products already with offline support. It appears Firefox may help some companies get to market with Offline Support acording to an article over at Read/Write Web.

I’m not sure to what extent Firefox would be able to support individual application features. Anyone have any ideas on how this might work?

And while that’s interesting, I think the Google / Firefox link is just as interesting, don’t you?

SaaS Search Terms

Thought it might be interesting to post the search terms that brought users to SaaS-a-fras in the last week. Perhaps obvious to some of you but I like to use this information to see who is comparing which products. Little competitive research anyone…..

zimbra tasks 2007
Zoho BlueTie Foldera Zimbra
foldera stock
saas
radicati intermedia
zoho security
webmail.us everyone.net comparison
zoho vs thinkfree
foldera beta invite
sherweb
foldera evaluation
usa.net 2007 email entries
zoho
poll saas
zimbra without email
project management tools
webmail.us not receiving emails 
Mi8 webmail
sherweb
wrike zoho
wrike
foldera 2007 
mailsnare
hosted saas enterprise trends 2007 ppt 
webmail.us zimbra 
mi8
saas powerpoint
zimbra and basecamp
Foldera 2007
outlook alternative 
saas trend 
projity 
bluetie vs 
google apps for enterprise 
document zoho google docs 
predictions for saas 2007 
zoho google docs comparison 
ajax13 web worker daily 
google docs and spreadsheets+document co 
zoho google
zoho security

Things I Decided Not to Cover

I can’t decide what to cover today. I was going to cover Ismael’s post over at IT Redux but the question about how office 2.0 will make money just had so many questions begging to be answered, I didn’t have time today to put my head around them -  so I decided not to. I wanted to mention Phil Wainewright’s article but I seem to be mentioning him a lot lately, but what are you going to do, his stuff is insightful - so I decided not to. 

2006 SaaS Stories Summary

Another good post from Phil over at ZDNet. This post summarizes “SaaS stories you may have missed in 2006“, couple of good stories I hadn’t seen before, interesting.

Around on the Security Post

Got a couple responses on my post related to the post over at simplerich. At the end of the day, I do believe that how customers use, or “too casually” use, these software products and put confidential data in public does impact the perceived security of the product and will impact product acceptance. See my full response over at the simplerich blog.

Technopreneur Summary of Office 2.0 - Collaboration

This an interesting summary of Office 2.0 - Collaboration. And an interesting little blog overall.