On Friday my old friends at CODA announced they are developing a new, on-demand, Software as a Service accounting application, and then yesterday they announced a strategic partnership with Salesforce.com. I reported it on blognation yesterday, and Dennis blogged about it at ZDNet and AccMan.
I think this is good news for the online accounting solutions market in the UK, as well as being a smart move for CODA. Up to this point, none of the mainstream, traditional accounting software providers have had any SaaS based offerings. Sage offer a hosted version of Sage 50 and Iris have hosted versions of Exchequer, but only companies like Twinfield, Liberty Accounts, WinWeb, Visor or Xero coming in from New Zealand (and a few others) have had proper web based accounting. CODA’s entrance to the market has to be a good thing for all of the online providers, adding legitimacy, creating some buzz, and I’m sure triggering some of the other significant players to announce their intent. The market should grow faster for all of us.
It’s a bold move for CODA, adding a more complete solution for their target market, but it comes with some risk. This is the first new, green field development they have done in 15 years, and they are doing it on Force.com, the renamed Salesforce Apex platfrom (which before that was the AppExchange platform). Apart from Salesforce’s own applications, I don’t know of any previous developments of this level of functionality using Force.com. As well as choosing a new development platform, CODA will be deploying a new business model alongside their traditional software business - that’s 3 new topics combined.
I worked with CODA as a partner for many years, and then directly for 5 years. As I said earlier, I think this is a very good move for them - the best strategic decision they’ve made since the release of e-Finance in the Baan era of the late 90s. For Salesforce it also makes very good sense - as Dennis says:
“It makes SFdC look like it’s on the road to having a credible ERP style platform even though it will be riffed as a best of breed play, while at the same time leaving the development risk in CODA’s hands.”
This announcement, combined with tomorrow’s SAP announcements on A1S mean there will be a lot more focus on the SaaS topic in the mid market here in the UK in the coming months.
Disclosure: As mentioned above, I worked for CODA for 5 years, and my consulting company is the UK partner for Twinfield.
