On The Way To 100 Million Dollars In SaaS Revenue: Vocus CEO Rick Rudman (Part 1)

Rick Rudman is the co-founder, CEO, president, and chairman of Vocus. Prior to founding Vocus he was one of the co-founders of Dataway Corporations, which developed software applications for large corporations. He earned a degree in accounting after spending four years in the Air Force and is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland.

SM: Rick, tell me about your background. Where do you come from?

RR: I was born and raised in the Washington, DC area. I went into the Air Force right out of high school. >>>

Servicing IT: ServiceNow CEO Fred Luddy (Part 7)

SM: Are there even any companies out there that have technologies worth acquiring that are in what you term the ERP for the IT market?

FL: Some, but not too many. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Computer Associates made done dozens and dozens of acquisitions. They would approach the ERP for the IT field with five or six acquisitions, none of which are integrated with each other. >>>

Vision India 2020 Book Review: Balaji S.

From Balaji Sowmyanarayanan’s review of Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra for the Fake Geek Limited blog:

“Unlike the usual business books that tell the strategy of a success story post facto, Vision India 2020 is an imagined retrospective circa 2020. The book features ideas and strategies that are likely success stories in 2020 – outlined as a source of inspiration to young Indian entrepreneurs. The book attempts to sincerely answer the question: What are the businesses to be started today in 2010 and scaled over the decade for India’s balanced all-round economic and social development by 2020?”

He has much more to say . . . read the entire review here.

Vision India 2020 is available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle, and from Smashwords.com in all e-book formats.

Deal Radar 2010: Medallia

On September 10, 2001, Medallia pitched to its first customer, a top five hotel company, as a pilot customer. Then came September 11th. Much to Medallia’s surprise, the hotel called back on September 12 and said it would like to move forward with Medallia, which built the prototype system. The company pressed ahead, and after six months the hotel replaced its traditional search system with Medallia, a platform that uses SaaS and Web-based technology to collect “customer intelligence” at every point of contact, allowing companies to measure customer sentiment accurately. The platform delivers real-time feedback and prompts employees to act on that feedback continuously. >>>

Servicing IT: ServiceNow CEO Fred Luddy (Part 6)

SM: Your company has been disruptive to the marketplace, which has forced your competitors to change their entire business model to address your success.

FL: Exactly. It’s similar to when Southwest came on the scene and dropped a whole new way of doing business for airlines into the market. We have a very different model. >>>

Vision India 2020 Book Review: Arjun Malhotra

Arjun Malhotra is the chairman and CEO of Headstrong, a U.S.-based IT services company.  He is also the chairman of TiE Global, the world’s largest not-for-profit organization for entrepreneurs.  In the 1970s, Arjun Malhotra co-founded HCL Technologies, one of the first Indian IT companies.  Here is his review of Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra: >>>

Servicing IT: ServiceNow CEO Fred Luddy (Part 5)

SM: I talk with a lot of CIOs. They tell me that 25% of their architecture is cloud computing. How does the role of the service desk evolve in that scenario?

FL: As these customers start to move more and different apps into the cloud, they still have to manage those applications and the vendors.  >>>

Catching Up On Readings: What’s Next For Content

Two of this week’s Tech Stocks posts offer an update on how newspapers plan to stay afloat in a sea of free content – Newspapers Down, But Not Out, and News Corp’s Gangbuster Quarter. You can read all of this week’s posts by clicking on the full article.

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