Interview with New SIIA Member, PaySimple

SIIA recently welcomed PaySimple to the SIIA community. After presenting at the SIIA Strategic & Financial Investment conference last month, I had a chance to chat with their CEO, Eric Remer. Read my full interview below.

Rhianna: Welcome to SIIA! Tell me a little about PaySimple and what makes you unique.

Eric: PaySimple simplifies the way small businesses bill and collect payments and empowers them with technology to make their business more efficient. Our cloud-based accounts receivable automation solution includes support for multiple payment types, across multiple payment channels (mobile, web, recurring, and invoice) all integrated with customer management. This solution uniquely meets the needs of small businesses in the services sector. With PaySimple, 85% of customers save time and 55% get paid faster. PaySimple also offers custom-branded programs for large enterprises looking to provide value-added solutions to their small business members. Partners in market today include American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Western Union, Vantiv, Jack Henry and ADP.

Rhianna: Your sweet spot is small businesses. As those businesses scale, can PaySimple scale along with them? Are their specific requirements for retaining those customers?

Eric: We are fortunate in that many of our customers have grown significantly since they began using PaySimple. While our solution is easily approachable for the business just making the switch to automated billing, it also has a robust feature set to support the evolving needs of growing businesses. Some examples include multiple users and roles, sophisticated reporting and proven scalability.
We’ve found that once a small business uses the system, they are likely to remain a customer for life. PaySimple places a strong emphasis on helping customers get started including uploading their customers and processing their first transaction. Most of our customers will achieve an ROI in their first month of usage. In our experience, the vital keys to retaining small business customers include a product that is easy to use, that provides ongoing tangible value all backed by amazing customer support.

Rhianna: As our lives become more and more mobile, how important is mobile to your business strategy?

Eric: Mobile is a key component of our business strategy. It is vital for small business owners to be able to conduct business and access information anytime from anywhere. PaySimple launched iPhone and Android apps last year and have continued to enhance and expand these apps in 2012.
We’ve found that small business owners not only want to use mobile devices to collect payments, but that they also find the ability to manage their business from anywhere very valuable. Some of the most common actions taken with our apps beyond payment processing include checking the receivables overview dashboard and interacting with customers such as pulling up a map, or placing a phone call.

Rhianna: You have received a couple of awards recently, JMP Securities Hot 100 Companies and Red Herring Americas Top 100 Private Companies. What does that recognition mean for PaySimple?

Eric: The recent recognition and awards we’ve received have been a great honor. We view these awards as another market indicator that the receivables automation movement is going mainstream to help small businesses improve their cash flow and manage their business more efficiently. We are excited to be recognized by these organizations for our innovative approach to helping small businesses and the enterprises that serve them.
 


Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the SIIA software division on Twitter @SIIASoftware

SIIA Announces Five Recommendations to Make Federal IT Reform a Reality

SIIA’s Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) today released an authoritative guide to help Federal CIOs and IT companies work together to effectively transition to a new cloud-based environment. SIIA crafted the guide to provide specific recommendations for fostering the development of the cloud in the Federal government and harnessing its full economic potential.

PSIG released the guide as part of the NIST Cloud Computing Forum and Workshop beginning today, and to coincide with the June 9th deadline for the 18-month deliverables for the 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT.

With budgets tightening, and the 25 Point Plan deadline looming, this is a critical time for Federal IT reform. Working closely with both Federal IT executives and so many companies that do business with the government gives us a unique perspective on the future of IT reform. At this important time, our goal is to help focus attention on what we see as the core priorities.

This guide provides recommendations around many of the central opportunities and challenges that are being debated among leaders in both the public and private sectors. We believe the development of a comprehensive IT strategy roadmap, along with consistent implementing guidance, will allow agencies to prioritize IT initiatives in order to make the original vision of the 25 Point Plan a reality.

The report offers five key recommendations for Federal decision makers:

1. Continue to promote the “Cloud First” policy developed in 2010
2. OMB and GSA should work together and with industry to remove barriers to effective planning and procurement.
3. Promote changes to federal acquisition process and culture that to ensure they keep pace with technology
4. Lower the barrier of market entry for small businesses
5. Develop a comprehensive Federal IT strategy roadmap

The full report, which includes detailed discussion of each recommendation, is available here.


Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

The questions that didn’t make it into Vision from the Top

Each year SIIA sets out to pick the minds of individuals who are shaping and growing our industry. Just a couple of weeks ago we released the 2012 Vision from the Top publication that features interviews with these business leaders providing thoughts on trends, M&A activity, and the future of our industry.

While we went through the interview process we asked the contributing executives some questions that you won’t find answered in the publication which I thought I would share with you. We asked the member executives to look at Forrester’s 2012 Cloud Predictions and tell us which one would have the most significant impact in 2012. The majority of contributors said “The cloud market will grow beyond $60 billion in 2012”. What does that say about cloud computing? It is not just a trend, it is the way in which we compute today and if you are not providing or consuming cloud services you will be at a disadvantage in the marketplace. HOWEVER, we also asked which of Forresters’ predictions will be the biggest challenge in 2012 and the majority also selected “The cloud market will grow beyond $60 Billion in 2012”. Clearly the consensus is that the cloud market will grow but will continue to face challenges, likely around security, integrations, etc.

Another popular response was that “Large enterprises will take the lead in cloud markets in 2012”. I found this one surprising since the enterprises have made a much slower move to the cloud than the SMBs. However, what I am hearing from the members is that 2012 will be the year. We have certainly seen a significant investment being made by the enterprises with all the recent M&A activity. Every day I wake up and wonder which one of the SIIA members will be acquired today!

If you read Vision from the Top you will see that the contributors are either CEOs or large business unit leaders of enterprises. We wanted to get an idea of their personal technology choices so we asked some personal questions (at least in the technology world these would be considered personal). Not surprising an overwhelming majority of contributing executives use an iPhone as their smartphone of choice. And an overwhelming number said they also carry a tablet of some kind, no more lugging around those heavy laptops.

Next we invaded the social space of the contributing authors. We asked how many of them actively used Facebook and approximately 60% said yes. At first I thought that number was low until I saw the answers to the next question, do you activity use LinkedIn? An overwhelming majority actively use LinkedIn. That should not be a surprise given the business nature of the application. Now here is an interesting one, the majority of respondents do not, yes DO NOT, actively use twitter. A little surprising but I suppose these executives leave Twitter to their marketing departments.

 


Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA.

SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Announces Founding Board of Directors

SIIA today announced the founding members of the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) Board of Directors. PSIG is a newly formed division of SIIA dedicated to helping technology firms take advantage of the evolving federal investment in cloud-related technologies.

Newly appointed board members are executives from SIIA member companies and will add a critical voice to the ongoing debate on a host of key issues affecting the government IT industry, including cloud computing, FedRAMP, mobility, security, big data, procurement and innovation. The PSIG Board will help develop the Division’s initiatives and determine the projects, activities and events—which will include thought leadership around the implementation of cloud computing and an executive roundtable series with key decision-makers.

The Public Sector Innovation Group Board of Directors will be chaired by Doug Bourgeois, Vice President and Chief Cloud Executive at VMware, Inc.

All executives were appointed to serve one‐year terms.

Public Sector Innovation Group Board of Directors 2012:
• Mike Binko, President and CEO, kloudtrack
• Doug Bourgeois, VP & Chief Cloud Executive, VMware, Inc.
• Bart Epstein, SVP and GM, Military and Federal, Tutor.com
• Mark Forman, Founder, Government Transaction Services
• Tom Gann, Vice President, Government Relations, McAfee
• Gunnar Hellekson, Chief Technology Strategist, RedHat US Public Sector
• Joel Hinzman, Senior Director, Federal Affairs, Oracle
• Robert Hodges, Federal Business Development Lead, Bancroft Technology Group
• John Landwehr, VP Digital Government Solutions, Adobe
• David Lucas, Chief Strategy Officer, Global Computer Enterprises
• Preston McGee, Director of Business Development, Peniel Solutions LLC
• David Mihalchik, Business Development Executive – Federal, Google
• Michelle Rudnicki, VP, Cloud Computing IBM
• Jeff Ward, Vice President – Federal, Fiberlink


Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.

Forced Localization: The New Protectionism

What do the following examples have in common?

  • In 2009, China proposed an indigenous innovation policy that would have explicitly restricted government contracts to goods whose embodied intellectual property was domestically owned.
  • In 2010, Norway ruled that cities could not use cloud computing services unless the servers were located domestically. Denmark followed suit in 2011.
  • In 2011, Kazakhstan attempted to require all .kz domains to operate on domestic servers.
  • In 2012, India proposed a requirement that government agencies purchase electronic goods and services with 30% local content.

These cases are examples of required localization: governments attempt to restrict the sale of goods and services within their territory to those which have been produced locally. The localization can be in terms of embodied intellectual property rights, manufacturing facilities, or facilities providing cloud computing services.

Governments cite national security concerns, or consumer protection issues or privacy and government access worries when imposing these restrictions. From a trade and economic point of view, however, they increase economic nationalism at the expense international trade.

What seemed like a series of isolated incidents now seems to be a trend, which if left unchecked, could seriously undermine the goal of increasing the flow of goods and services across borders. The 2012 Special 301 Report (p. 18) and the 2012 Section 1377 telecom trade report document the extent to which these localization initiatives could hinder bi-lateral, regional and global economic integration.

SIIA and other worldwide businesses and trade associations are seeking an effective response to the growing threat of a new protectionism based on localization initiatives.

Two principals that are gaining wide currency among industry and NGOs stand in stark opposition to this new protectionism. These principles are embodied in the agreement between the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the European Commission on a set of trade-related principles for information and communication technology (ICT) services:

  • Cross-Border Information Flows: Governments should not prevent service suppliers of other countries, or customers of those suppliers, from electronically transferring information internally or across borders, accessing publicly available information, or accessing their own information stored in other countries.
  • Local Infrastructure: Governments should not require ICT service suppliers to use local infrastructure, or establish a local presence, as a condition of supplying services. In addition, governments should not give priority or preferential treatment to national suppliers of ICT services in the use of local infrastructure, national spectrum, or orbital resources.

Since this agreement was made in April 2011, several intergovernmental, industry and non-governmental civil society groups have endorsed these principles, including SIIA, the Aspen Institute, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and a group of trade associations and companies lead by the National Foreign Trade Council.

There is momentum in both the private sector and the U.S. government to take on this issue in the strongest possible way. The US government is ramping up its efforts to move these principles forward. For instance, they are embodied in the electronic commerce chapter of the U.S. proposal in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations.

SIIA urges that this issue be moved to the highest levels of U.S. government decision making and raised in all significant international venues including economic gatherings of heads of state such as the recent G-8 meeting, meetings of the ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group, committees of the World Trade Organization, OECD working groups and trade discussions such as TPP. Only a sustained, high-level commitment from the U. S. government will turn the tide against this new form of economic nationalism.


Mark MacCarthy, Vice President, Public Policy at SIIA, directs SIIA’s public policy initiatives in the areas of intellectual property enforcement, information privacy, cybersecurity, cloud computing and the promotion of educational technology.

SIIA Submits Testimony to Congressional Forum on Information Technology

Last Friday, Representatives Elijah Cummings (MD) and Gerry Connelly (VA) hosted a Congressional Forum on Information Technology at the Fairfax County, Virginia Government Center to review government’s efforts to leverage innovative technology to reduce cost and improve citizen services. The forum featured testimony from Federal CIO Steven Van Roekel, as well as industry representatives including SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Board Member, David Mihalchik of Google. SIIA was pleased to have been asked by the Members to provide testimony for the record.

SIIA’s testimony focused on the important transformative benefits of cloud computing – economic growth, choice and lower cost — and encouraged Congress to consider these when looking at cloud computing. We also highlighted the key security benefits that can be realized by implementing cloud computing, discussed the importance of the 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT, and explored the inter-relationship between Cloud First, FedRAMP, the Shared Services Strategy and the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.
Overall, the interaction between Reps. Cummings and Connelly and the forum witnesses was thoughtful and successfully highlighted the issues of importance to government and industry alike as the federal government moves ahead with cloud computing. It was particularly encouraging to see these key members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee engage on an issue of such great importance to SIIA members and the federal IT industry as a whole and we applaud them for their effort.

Read the full text of SIIA’s statement.


Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

This week in the Federal Cloud: April 30-May 4

There were a couple of expected but relatively big announcements around cloud in the federal government this week. First and foremost was the issuance of the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy on May 2nd by Federal CIO, Steve VanRoekel. The Shared Services Strategy, like the Shared-First Initiative before it, seeks to reduce the overall cost of government by eliminating duplicative IT and streamlining operations, while moving agencies to shared platforms for commodity IT (like email and storage), support IT (HR and financial management) and eventually mission IT (performance management). Under the plan, agencies have until August 31 to create their shared services roadmaps.

Also this week, we heard the first definitive date for the launching of the FedRAMP Initial Operational Capabilities (IOC), as it was publically announced that June 6th would be the date. This means, according to the FedRAMP timeline that we will see an operational program, with limited scope. We should also expect to see progress toward the official authorization/certification of CSPs, an updated Concept of Operations, and updated continuous monitoring guidance. It also means we will have to have approved third party assessors (3PAOs) in the very near term as they play an integral part in certifying CSPs. It was originally expected that we would have approved 3PAOs in April, but that date was later pushed to early May.

In other cloud news:


Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.