Intuit’s Edge Challenged By H&R Block This Tax Season

Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), the maker of QuickBooks and Turbo Tax accounting software, last week reported its second quarter results that missed its revenue guidance due to a delay in electronic tax filings. Intuit expects the delay to shift about $60 million revenue to the next quarter, and its shares are trading about 8% higher after the earnings report. Some analysts, however, say that Intuit is facing stiff competition from H&R Block.

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sankarson Banerjee, CIO Of IndiaInfoline (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Are you using a platform as a service (PaaS) solution as a base to move your applications to the cloud? Are you using Google App Engine or Force.com or something similar? How are you putting those applications on the cloud?

SB: Well, clouds mean different things to different people. We primarily use virtual machines on the cloud. The really advanced versions of the cloud, which is what the Google App Engine or elastic applications on Azure are, we don’t really use those yet. Not all of our legacy applications are geared to make use of it. We have a very small trial application on Microsoft Azure, and we are not there on the Google App Engine yet; we don’t have anything serious on the Google App Engine. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sankarson Banerjee, CIO Of IndiaInfoline (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Which e-mail system did you use before you moved to Google?

SB: We had a mixture of Microsoft Exchange for the power users and open source components–based simple SMTP e-mail for nonpower users. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sankarson Banerjee, CIO Of IndiaInfoline (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What were the implications of the decision to move to cloud-based servers from a cost structure point of view? In general, what analysis did you do to make that decision? I am sure there is a convenience aspect, which is one thing that I am hearing from a lot of CIOs. CIOs don’t want to be in the data center management business, and historically they have been for their respective organizations. One of the key drivers for enterprises moving into the cloud is that CIOs are fed up with being in the data center business. With the advent of cloud computing, they are outsourcing it to data center vendors. What was your thought process when you moved into the cloud, and what was the impact on your cost structure? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sankarson Banerjee, CIO Of IndiaInfoline (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: I am asking this from an IT point of view: What is the distribution of the employee base that you are supporting today?

SB: We support both our employees and the franchisees with our IT. We have nearly 3,000 franchisees. We provide connections to them; we provide all kinds of services, including software, to them as well. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sankarson Banerjee, CIO Of IndiaInfoline (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Will the cloud level the entrepreneur playing field and smooth out some of the ugly bumps encountered during a typical startup journey, especially in an Indian context, similar to how India leapfrogged years of telecommunication lag through its mass adoption of mobile technology? What are some of the barriers, challenges, and blue-sky opportunities for new offerings and newer businesses in India based on the cloud? In the following interview, Sramana and Sankarson Banerjee, CIO of IndiaInfoline, dig into several aspects of cloud computing technology adoption and market needs in India. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Let’s talk about moving to Google Apps or Google e-mail at some point. Right now you work on an Exchange platform. You have developed all your applications on top of the Microsoft environment. Now if you move to Google, all of that investment kind of becomes a rogue situation, right? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Based on my research, I see a distinct trend [toward] interesting private cloud deployment.

LO: Very interesting! What would you say is the driver; I am curious to know.

SM: I think it’s cost that is the driver, which is why I was probing that, to understand what your perspective on private cloud adoption was. To some extent, it has happened in some cases that cost is the driver. Earlier, you mentioned cases that required the kind of data security and clients did not want to co-mingle their data with other data in a multi-tenant multi-cloud environment. Those are some of the drivers for private cloud adoption as well. What surprised me was – and I have heard it from SMEs as well – that there are the large vendors of infrastructure who are pushing private cloud’s stacks to their large customer base. It is they who are trying to build analytics clouds internally. >>>