Social Media, SaaS, and PaaS in a For-Profit World

© Asite Solutions Ltd. 2000-2009

A Global Software as a Service Platformfor Supply Chain Collaboration

Social Media, SaaS, and PaaS in a For-Profit World


Talking Points

Who is Asite?

Our Real-World Industry

Think Outside the Firewall

SaaS and PaaS

Accelerate Organic Growth

Asite Engaging – Some Social Media Highlights

Leverage Your Community

What Next?


Who is Asite

7 Days up to - 25/09/2009

Asite was founded in 2001 and is based in the City of London.We provide collaborative Software as a Service (cSaaS) for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Property sectors.


An industry built on contracts...

Selling Off Risk

Squeezing Supply Chains

Lowest Cost Tendering

Fragmentation

200,000+ companies in UK Construction alone


Data Logistics Challenges

Real-World Global Logistics

Supported (or undermined) by data logistics

The Built Environment is the collision of the virtual and physical worlds


Gen Y? Gen Z? Gen BIM?

Will they change our industry’s culture?

Make partnering the norm?

Finally deliver on Egan and Latham?

If so – how long?

In the meantime – what can we as a SaaS Platform learn from their behaviours?

Impatient with traditional sales and marketing.

Expect Connected-Up Data available all the time

Self-Service Culture


The Long Tail?

There are more than 200,000 companies and 2 Million individuals in UK Construction

This contributes roughly 10% of GDP

Out of this, the “top-tier” companies represent 13% - the rest is the Long Tail

Are SaaS, PaaS, open systems, and social media the tools that will bring construction collaboration to the entire supply chain?


Outside the Firewall

Think outside-the-firewall.

Do you see opportunities to reach out across the Web to your prospects, your customers, your customers’ prospects, your partners and your partners’ customers?

If you can, then you have taken the first step toward breaking out of the mainstream SaaS hard life of low cost-based competition to the Web world of innovation, differentiation and competitive advantage.

-- paraphrasing Joel York, http://chaotic-flow.com , @chaoticflow on Twitter


The Extended Enterprise

Our customers are the whole AEC supply chain

Their job is to deliver to the Asset owners and operators

Our job is to enable them and enable their systems to connect


The Commercial Cloud

Unlimited Storage – Elastic Processing

Government Accreditations – Security, Privacy, Process, Business Continuity (AUDIT AUDIT AUDIT)

Service Level Agreements – Contracted

Global Infrastructure and Regulatory Compliance


SaaS and PaaS

Platform as a service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service


Asite AppBuilder - True PaaS

Build, test, and deploy your own Applications to run on the Asite Platform

Point and Click development

Totally customisable

Connect via Asite API to data and functionality in platform

Connect to external sources


Asite Website Home Page

Free Accounts

Free Trials

Online Purchase

Community Content

Directory Search

Open API


“My Home” Page

Personalised Pages per user

Add portlets for a variety of functionality

Create Dashboards

Mashups

Partner API to deploy applications


Community Tag Clouds

Workspaces can be tagged by users

This creates a tag cloud for workspaces

The tags are visible to all users with access rights to the workspaces

Filter workspace listings with tags


Dashboards and Portlets

Build Dashboards

Drill-Down through data

Export into other systems

Each user has a full self-service capability to customise the view


Location-Based Mashups

Google Maps Mashup

Virtual Earth Mashup (3D)

Integrate project data into maps views

Visualise project portfolios geographically

Render BIM objects from your projects into Virtual Earth


Google Earth Integration

Render your models from Asite into Google Earth

Carry full object detail, including non-graphical properties

Quickly create visual mash-ups of your schemes


Asite Community Home Page

Free to Participate

Community Forums

Asite Directory

The A-Blog

The Asite Wiki


The A-Blog

The Asite company blog

Multiple bloggers

Early days...


Asite Community Forums

Asite Forums – open to all – free to sign-up

Discussions on Product input, services, hints and tips, and Build London Live (so far!)


Asite Directory

Free to Use

Search all companies on the Asite Plartform

Search by location, trade, capability, etc.


Asite Directory

Self-Service data management by suppliers

Highly detailed information capture

Granular control over what detail you make public or only share with partners


Asite Wiki

Being seeded with a glossary of industry terms

Mostly Asite contributions so far

Link destination from corporate website and platform


Asite on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/asite


Asite on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/asitesolutions


Asite on Twitter

OOPS!


Asite on Twitter (again)

http://twitter.com/asite


Asite on Facebook

Alumni and Current Employee Networking


Leverage Your Community

What is the true economic value of your community to your business? Free labour. Honest labour. Loyal labour. Viral labour.

By reaching out to your advocates and supporting their goals be they back-office or blogging, you are putting feet on the street.

If you are a start-up with a sales force of two, all of a sudden you find yourself with a sales force of hundreds or thousands or millions!

When you open up your application and encourage your own customers to crowdsource improvements, then you can check items off your roadmap without writing a single line of code.

-- again paraphrasing Joel York, http://chaotic-flow.com , @chaoticflow on Twitter


What does it take?

Work work and more work.

Live the content – the social network does not embrace laziness, disingenuity, or thinly-veiled sales pitches

Turn up. All the time. Your partners, prospects, and customers cannot collaborate with an empty seat.

When you do build technology – make sure it is an enabler for organic growth. – It must help your customers do it themselves – without you.

Open Open Open.


Where Next?

BIM-finity – Collaborative BIM

Real-Time Data Across the Supply Chain

Mobile Revolution?

Into the long, long, tail….

Where the community and the network takes us!


Thank You!

Contact: Nathan Doughty

Asite Website: www.asite.com and www.asite.com/community

Personal Blog: www.freecollaboration.net

Twitter: @asite and @nrdoughty

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nrdoughty

Documents

Social Media, SaaS, and PaaS in a For-Profit World