I certainly hope that readers of this blog feel that they derive benefits from it. (And please use the Comment tool to let me know if that’s so and what else you want to read!) But members of the Cloud Accounting Institute can claim certain tangible benefits and this post will show you how.

If you sign up for a membership in CAI, I will share with you the AccessTekBusinessSimple (TM) questionnaire that I use with clients for requirements definition and cost/benefit analysis. In addition, Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research, has given us permission to distribute the latest, greatest version of  his company’s much-requested TCO tool, “On-Premise Versus On-Demand Rapid TCO Comparison.“

The old folks say there is nothing new under the the sun. That saying never made sense to me when I was younger. I belong to a generation that saw amazing inventions in computing and telecommunications come seemingly out of the blue to transform the way we live and work.

Now, with over 20 years of experience in providing technology services to clients, I see it differently. New things come out of old patterns. In computing, the pendulum keeps swinging between two poles: dedicated and shared resources. (Got kids? Watch them flip back and forth between ”That’s mine” and “Let’s share.” Same song, different verse.)

Art Rosenberg got me thinking about this with his “back to the future” blog  on the roots of interactive applications.

In my last post, I shared predictions that various observers of cloud computing had made based on their perspectives and the information available to them. I gave them precedence because the Cloud Accounting Institute has been in existence only a few months–not long enough to do much original research. But that is going to change, starting now and hopefully starting with you.

The Cloud Accounting Institute is launching its first survey

Making predictions is a time-honored way to celebrate the New Year. It goes along with making resolutions. In the depth of winter we pump ourselves up for a fresh start by asserting that we know where we’re going and we know what it takes to get there. So let me confess, I read lists of predictions and resolutions with a passion. I’d like to share two of this year’s crop with you.

Andrew Hickey’s “10 Cloud Predictions for 2012″ starts out, “Ok, ok. This time it’s for real. We’ve been hearing it for the last four or five years, but 2o12 is it. 2012 is the real deal. 2012 is, for lack of a better term, the year of the cloud.” You’ll see that statement repeated everywhere this year.

It is almost that time of year again – time to close the books on the current year and celebrate the holidays with friends and family. I wish you every success and happiness. At this time of year, I am very aware that the bottom line counts, but the people you love count even more.

In keeping with that, Season’s Greetings from everyone at the Cloud Accounting Institute! We will be taking time off for the holidays and you will not hear from us again until the beginning of the new year.  Come January, I will tell you about our plans for an awards program for cloud accounting project leaders. Make a New Year’s resolution to enter your project!

As I mentioned in my last post, companies adopting SaaS solutions expect three major benefits: to simplify software management, reduce costs, and improve internal and external collaboration. Let’s look at the third benefit – improving internal and external collaboration. It was selected as a prime driver by a quarter of the respondents to a Saugatuck Technology survey of business executives.

Improving collaboration seems more intangible than the other two benefits, but it’s not. Here’s what one of our accounting business partners says about it. “Increasing our ability to connect with client data does more than remove inefficiencies from our relationships with clients. It enables us to perform services and provide business advice that actually helps grow the client’s bottom line,” says Kenneth Overholt, CPA, a principal in DiGiovine Hnilo Jordan + Johnson Ltd. (DHJJ). 

In a recent article  titled, “Another reason not to cloud wash – real cloud services are maturing fast” Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst James Staten wrote: “Since cloud became a household word, vendors and enterprises alike have jumped to declare victory on cloud with services and infrastructure implementations that really don’t deliver cloud value but have the same foundation – something we call ‘cloudwashing.’ This is a dangerous gambit as you claim legitimacy but don’t activate the same economics, deliver the autonomy that cloud services offer to your internal users and aren’t standardized or automated enough to deliver transformative agility. In other words you claim cloud but are achieving only incrementally better value.”

One of Murphy’s Laws of Computing  states, “When you get to the point that you really understand your system, it is probably obsolete.”  And the sequel: when you go to replace it, all the options are systems you don’t understand. No wonder people hate to have to replace their accounting system!

In this situation, a sound decision-making process can save you from spinning your wheels. Leave the details of how the possible replacements work to the VAR or dealer you are working with, for the time being. “Decision-making is one of the defining characteristics of leadership. It’s core to the job description. Making decisions is what managers and leaders are paid to do,” as the Decision Quality trainers say.

When Saugatuck Technology surveyed more than 700 business management, finance and IT executives about the  business benefits they expected from adopting SaaS offerings, the top three were simplifying software management, reducing capital and/or operating costs, and improving internal and external collaboration, selected respectively by 30%, 29% and 23% of the respondents. From previous posts you can see how the first two can be realized. I’ll address the third in a later post.

Turning to another 2010 survey, this one by Forrester Research, the top three concerns about adopting SaaS offerings were security (40%), integration challenges with other applications (32%), and total cost of ownership (30%). 

Accounting Today wrote a great article about the launch of the Cloud Accounting Institute, highlighting our educational initiatives and our plans to sponsor awards for successful cloud projects. While we were talking, the Accounting Today tech editor, Seth Fineberg, commented that our cloud project user awards are very innovative. He did not know of any other associations in the accounting world with anything like it. This makes us even more excited to finish up our award preparations and share them with you. Look for more detail forthcoming in January 2012.

Seth also mentioned that Accounting Today also blogs. Curious to see what they do, I browsed their Debits & Credits blog, where almost immediately I found news you will like.